San Diego's Crocodiles are set to do a short tour of the UK and Europe mid-May in support of new record 'Love Is Here' out now on. Kicking off next week on 15th May at Glasgow's Broadcast, the ten date tour takes in London's Moth Club 18th May culminating in Lyon on the 30th May. 

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To coincide with the tour, Crocodiles have released a video for album track 'Nuclear Love', all scuzzy feedback and gauzy guitars perfectly matching the vibrant cut and paste aesthetics of

the video. 

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Electrically charged with time, Crocodiles' seventh album 'Love Is Here' expresses heartbreak and anxiety on a global scale. But with 20 years of friendship and music backing them, Charlie Rowell and Brandon Welchez (creators of Crocodiles) know how to take on adversity: by persevering

and banding together to create 10 songs like lightning bolts in a stormy sky.

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For those who missed the beginning, and also for those who have nothing to lose by hearing the story again, Brandon Welchez and Charlie Rowell went on tour for the first time about 20

years ago. They left San Diego together in a van with the motor smoking. The van broke

down in Arizona where they found another and continued on into the Northwest of the

United States. The second van broke down as well, but Brandon and Charlie finished

the tour. When they returned to San Diego, they agreed that they enjoyed the

experience and were ready to get on the road again.

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Around ten years before, the two met each other in San Diego during an anti-Nazi protest and connected over their interests in DIY Punk. Brandon and Charlie were playing in separate

bands that would often go on tour, but without a foreseeable future. The two artists

craved music and tour life, wanting to travel and make a career for themselves. The

duo created Crocodiles in 2008, first to play garage-rock with a cheap synthesizer,

but especially to find the music within themselves.

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“It’s lucky that we met, because neither of us wanted to play music just for a few years, then find a job and settle down. If you want to be an artist, you have to do it 100 percent. Life can be hard, you can be broke and deal

with tough times, but at least you know you’re alive,” Brandon said of

the duo’s beginning.

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Twenty years of friendship and ten years of Crocodiles later, Charlie and Brandon still haven’t changed their motto. They moved around (Charlie now lives in Paris and Brandon in Mexico),

their music evolved, they have produced six albums and switched vans and labels, but the

heart, energy and faith are still the same. The groups that have inspired the Crocodiles 

most, among others, are The Fall, Sonic Youth, and Guided By Voices. For the duo,

these rock missionaries have demonstrated how to advance, grow and hold together

without holding back. In the group, Brandon and Charlie play rock, but they also

display their lives, served up, album after album.

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For their seventh album, everything is in the title: Love Is Here. The oldest song on the album, Prisoners, was composed in 2015 when Brandon and Charlie were both in the

middle of emotional turmoil. 

 

Charlie said of the album:

 

 “We didn’t have anything planned, but when we put the texts together, we noticed that they often talked about love and hope that only existed because of their opposites, hate and negativity.” 

 

Brandon explained:

 

 “The theme of the album is how to handle your life after a breakup, the darker and more painful side of love. And everything that was happening

in our lives echoed in the political world: Trump being elected, far-rights rising to power all over the world, the paranoia of this era. Everything seemed dark and hopeless.”

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In 2015, Brandon and Charlie were living in New York together, reunited like the beginning of their friendship, and began rocking out in the old-school punk band Flowers of Evil along side members of the band A Place To Bury Strangers. Reuniting and getting back to the

basics, the energy and rage from Flowers of Evil had an impact on Love Is Here.

 

After their sixth album (Dreamless, 2016) with a more pop-electro feel, Love Is Here celebrates the return to electric catharsis.

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Similar to the era of their first tour, Crocodiles went on tour from the West to the East with their California rock melodies, post summer-of-love (or summer of hate) and the guitars evoke late

70s in New York. The duo recorded Love Is Here for three weeks during winter in Mexico with

their friend and producer Martin Thulin, in a live setting, with a drummer and a bass player.

The songs run through layers of psychedelic fog, full-speed, (Nuclear Love, Love Is Here) or

leave a little breathing room (My Far Out Friend, Prisoners).

 

The album is dark with Brandon and Charlie singing of confusion and delusion, but never lost with the offset of strong guitar riffs.

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Crocodiles is the first American group to sign with the Strasbourg label Deaf Rock. The connection was made while Charlie was producing the latest album of the group The Blind Suns, also signed with Deaf Rock. Everyone got along and the two Francophiles are excited for this new step in

their career. Love is here. For the end, we will have to wait a while longer.

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LIVE DATES

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15th May - Broadcast - Glasgow  
16th May - Sneaky Pete’s - Edinburgh 
17th May - Soup Kitchen - Manchester  
18th May - Moth Club - London 
19th May - The Lanes - Bristol 
22nd May - Hope & Ruin - Brighton 
23rd May - Jericho Tavern - Oxford 
25th May - L’Autre Canal - Nancy 
29th May - Atabal - Biarritz 
30th May - Ninkasi - Lyon

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B I Z Z A R R E

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