Enamored with both shoegazers of the ’90s and new wave revivalists from the ’00s, Crescendo are perhaps best described as a cross between Lush and The Strokes. Their second album, 2016’s Unless, is shimmery and upbeat, yet it’s also somewhat soporific, driven by the subtle push-pull of jabbing guitars and chiming riffs atop a bed of insistent, electronic drums, galactic keyboards and understated male/female vocals. “Being labeled ‘dreamgaze’ has been consistent,” frontman Gregory Cole told the music blog When the Sun Hits. “However, based on the beats per minute in our songs, including the drum parts, we certainly make it a goal to inspire listeners to dance and disappear from reality via space travel.” While Crescendo continue to generate a buzz in the indie community, members Olive Kimoto and Jess Rojas split their time between the group and their electronic-based project Unbloom.
Crescendo’s music grows with intensity: the sounds swell, the emphasis moves to the heart, and then resonates throughout the rest of the body. It feels unstoppable, endless. Crescendo is a young quintet from Los Angeles: their sound is bright, clear shoegaze. To be more precise—it’s the most dreamy and ethereal of this genre. The most striking thing about the band’s second work, “Unless,” is the seamless collide of heavenly melodies and tight rhythm: an urgency that pervades every song on the album. The guitars are crisp, the drums are pushed to the max, the synths are engulfed in layers, and the voices of Gregory Cole and Olive Kimoto explode in some distant galaxy. The quintet declares bands like the Radio Dept. and Smiths as their inspirations, but it’s easy to find affinities with bands like DIIV, Craft Spells, and Wild Nothing as well. Definitely the feature that most distinguishes Crescendo is their brightness, an idea of music that travels beyond light, fast and relaxed, while explosions and flashes rumble and shudder all around it. The center of this album can be found in the title: “Unless”—a word which sums up the band’s attitude about this project: “Unless is the word you use to start the conversations that change obstacles or impossible feats, and that word connects sci-fi space romance and our music together.”
The Fat Angel Sings 