Published
I’ve spent a few months turning over Chalk’s debut album in my mind. The Irish duo of Ross Cullen and Benedict Hardie-Goddard won me over with some of their advance singles. The ones that lean more towards synth-pop. But then, when I put the album on, the harshness of some of its tracks put me off a little. Because although we could describe their music as electronic post-punk, there is clearly a strong Nine Inch Nails influence too. Over the past few weeks, though, I’ve returned to them because they are opening for Fontaines D.C. at their upcoming Spanish shows. And, well, having heard the latest record from Grian Chatten and company, I now understand why they picked them to open their tour.
Cullen and Goddard met at film school in Belfast and count David Lynch among their biggest influences. Apparently, that matters quite a bit when it comes to their live shows, where they use some pretty cool projections. Although I don’t know whether they’ll bring them along on this tour supporting Fontaines D.C. I also think it comes through strongly in their music, since several tracks on this album wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the soundtrack to ‘Carretera Perdida’. Because, as I said above, the shadow of Trent Reznor looms large over some of these songs. Just listen to “Tongue”, which opens the record with an industrial sound and some hefty screaming — the fact that it shares its name with one of Fontaines’ latest singles is pure coincidence. Or “Pain”, where the electronics and dance music get covered in grime.
The good thing about ‘Crystalpunk’ is that its songs soften as the minutes go by. That’s why I think they are such a good choice to open the shows on this Fontaines D.C. tour. There’s plenty of the dark electronic pop heard on some tracks from ‘Dopamine Chamber’. It’s true, though, that Chalk take it a little further towards the dance floor. There’s “Can’t Feel It”, which I imagine is going down a storm in the darker clubs. Or the much more delicate, pop-leaning “One-Nine-Eight-Zero”. And then there’s “I.D.C.”, where we find a strong Depeche Mode influence. Because, in the end, all these artists draw on the band from Basildon. And I include Reznor in that: he has always been a big fan of Gahan and company.
The most surprising thing about Chalk’s music is that, at times, they embrace outright dance music without holding back. Take “Skem”, which heads into some pretty powerful, filthy techno that has nothing to do with post-punk. And on “Béal Feirste”, we get an almost eight-minute track where you could comfortably say that the Underworld influence is more than obvious. To close, though, they prefer to slow things down and give us “Ache”, returning to the deepest darkness. And the truth is that, after the banger before it, you could certainly call ending the album like this a bit of a comedown.
78/100