Sister Crayon
Devoted
I'm sitting on a chair. I'm drinking a cup of coffee. The sky is gray. Not violent but close. My feet are bare. My mind clouded by the weight of freedom. It races. It gets stuck on itself.
Music is a key. Or a brake. Or like when you refocus a projector and realize just how out of it things were.
Thoughts stop. Spill instead of rush. Seep instead of the normal downhill stream tumbles over rocks and eddies in little pools of holy shit. It feels deep and comforting and I feel grateful for whatever reaches its hand through the fog and grabs tight. Holds me in the those moments.
The first time I heard Terra Lopez's voice I knew everything was going to change. Personally. Her bitches' brew is of lust and sneer and giggle and soul, vulnerability, strength, honesty, and-maybe most of all-confidence. It's like you can feel that it comes to her as naturally as it didn't.
Terra Lopez and Dani Fernandez are the original Sister Crayon and their 2013 EP Cynic with Fake Four, Inc. caused the fuse box in my brain to catch on fire and there were the medical bills and insurance claims for property damage and what not, legal fees, but I didn't even fucking care at all because all they made me feel like doing was roasting marshmallows.
Sister Crayon is back with as deep and driven and break-filled record as they ever made. Devoted, their second and newest full-length LP, is church-like in its soaring hymnals, its yearning, its momentarily quiet reflections, all genuflecting at the back pew with a heavy heart and humble hands. Eyes down and hearts up.
And Sister Crayon's production is so on point. They are a machine. I like that I don't know how it works. Kicks kick, bass booms, skitters skitters, echoes echo, flips flip, bleeps blip and blip bleep, all really fucking seriously technical sheet right there, people. But however the fuck they stir that iron cauldron, it's the sauce. And I want to pour it on everything. Eat it from the bottle with a spoon. I want to roll q-tips in it and coat my ear holes like a crazy person.
Sister Crayon are a key. Or a brake. Their vibrating songs just enough to snap everything back into place. Twice now. You might say it's a coincidence for Sister Crayon to have found me in knots for a second time, and helped. You might say, Brandon, dude, you exist on planet Earth as a knot in human form. You need help. But Sister Crayon's nails know just how to get it loosened enough that I can free it.