“We’ve already had so much success without releasing an album that there is this huge pressure around ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’,” starts Crawlers vocalist Holly Minto. “People keep telling us that as soon as we release it, things will really start for us, but what the fuck have we been doing this whole time then?” she continues with a smirk.
Taking the explosive theatrics that have made Crawlers such a must-see live force over the past few years, the band’s debut album now comes with a newfound sense of self as the once-self-described “silly eyeliner band” come into their own. It’s a record that doesn’t need to worry about chasing the latest trends in guitar music or fitting into a wider world ‘cos people are undoubtedly going to flock to the one Crawlers have built.
Crawlers formed in 2018, with guitarist Amy Woodall, bassist Liv Kettle and vocalist Holly playing their grunge-inspired rock’n’roll in whatever North East venue would have them. They developed a loyal following from the back of Amy’s Fiat Punto, but the inclusion of drummer Harry Breen and the release of ‘Come Over (Again)’ in 2021 quickly changed the band’s trajectory. The following year, they supported childhood heroes My Chemical Romance at Warrington’s Victoria Park, played before Maneskin at the Montreux Jazz Festival and put in dominant showings everywhere from Reading & Leeds to Community and The Great Escape.
A sold-out UK headline tour, a run of shows around North America and their ‘Loud Without Noises’ mixtape rounded out a year which Holly could only describe as “a bit silly”. 2023 was more of the brilliant same, but that hasn’t stopped Holly from feeling physically sick about the release of their debut album, occasionally checking in to see whether her old job at Nando’s was still hiring.
“It’s more anticipation for me,” adds Liv. “I’ve enjoyed every single moment that has led us here. I’m excited to see where the album takes us next.”
The first proper idea for ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ was written in 2020 and became the shimmering ‘Call It Love’. By the time it came to actually sit down and pull the record together last year, Crawlers had a “disgusting” stack of 190 demos to try and make sense of. “Which are the ones we really care about?” explains Liv of their process, with the resulting twelve tracks perhaps not the most obvious choices.
When they first started writing, the group were inspired by Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’, Pixies’ ‘Doolittle’ and Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’. “Just these amazing 90s alternative bands that wrote these incredible songs and managed to dress them up while still maintaining a rawness,” says Holly. That fuzzy rage can be felt across Crawlers’ back catalogue and continued to shape what would become the album’s prologue, angsty standalone singles ‘Messiah’ and ‘That Time Of Year Always’.
But as the process continued and the band continued to chase that feeling of excitement, their influences broadened. Amy got more into production, with Yeah Yeah Yeahs an important touchstone, while the joyous fury of Boygenius’ ‘The Record’ also inspired ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’. There were times Crawlers had to tell their label to trust them, especially with the nu-metal meets Bjork-inspired ‘Better If I Just Pretend’, but the end result brings new colours and dynamics to the band’s world without destroying anything that’s come before. “We’ve really been allowed to spread our feelings on a page with this album,” says Holly.
“The first song that we wrote that wasn’t typical for us was ‘Come Over (Again)’, and that one did alright,” grins Liv, with their breakout track currently sitting at well over 50 million streams. “We were really nervous about releasing it all those years ago, but we quickly realised that the excitement it made us feel was far more important. That energy has carried on through the mixtape and into this album. It might not be what people expect Crawlers to sound like, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t us.”
“The point of ‘Loud Without Noise’ was that it felt like an actual mixtape. It wasn’t coherent; it was just all our different influences on the same record. Sonically, a lot of the songs on the album are still really different,” explains Holly, pointing at the Adele-esque ballad ‘Golden Bridge’ that sits neatly alongside the heavy ‘Better If I Just Pretend’. “It all works together, though. We made sure it felt like the same world, and all our different influences help paint this collective vision,” she adds. “Everything’s elevated.”
“We are just in a place now where we are a lot more comfortable with who we are as individuals and as a band. The album definitely screams that,” says Liv. “There’s this unspoken mantra now that we are okay with ourselves.
The Fat Angel Sings 