Indie Surf
2010
Crazy for You is one of those records that you know had to have come out at that exact point in time to leave behind the impression it did. Not that it's a particularly memorable record in the grand scheme of things; its formula of 3-minute sunny guitar pop songs wasn't exactly a rarity in the 2000s, and it didn't produce any hits like 'Island in the Sun' or 'Someday' that unbeknownst to us then, would mutate from zeitgeist-defining summer anthems to irritating radio fodder over the next 20 years. But for those who gave it a listen when it came out, Crazy for You will absolutely become one of those albums that, if you pick it up again, immediately brings back all the feelings you had of the person you were back in the summer of 2010.
The surf-y riffs on opener 'Boyfriend' offer immediate proof of Bethany Consentino and Bobb Bruno's ear for catchy melodies. Their sweetly fuzzy guitars on 'Crazy for You' bring to mind the Jesus and Mary Chain at their most approachable, while the longing ballad 'Our Deal' slows things down just a touch to create a Ronettes-esque '60s girl group sound. The earworm nature of tracks like 'The End' benefit from a combo of twinkling guitars and reverbed vocals that would fit right in with the tweepop sound of contemporaries Saturday Looks Good to Me and The Pipettes.
'Bratty B' and 'I Want To' goes up a gear with Weezer-adjacent three-chord riffing, with the closer 'When I'm With You' provides a more slickly produced version of the lo-fi demo that first brought them attention back in 2009 or so.
There aren't many albums that scream 'lazy summer at a beach house rental' better than this. Granted, the tracks start sounding a little samey and the lyrics are frequently unimaginative and campy, but that lends the record a certain innocence that Pitchfork-baiting garage rock of that time lacked. Crazy for You has a youthful carefree-ness that, warts and all, was captured perfectly, and proved impossible to reproduce on future albums.
