Numavi Records Press Crush – Past Perfect

Graz-based indie quintet Crush will release their second album Past Perfect via Numavi Records on May 5, 2023.

“Past Perfect is definitely a spring album!”, say the five musicians Christina Lessiak (vocals, guitar), Christian Lach (guitar, synth), Katrin Borecky (synth, vocals), Verena Borecky (bass) and Manfred Herzog (drums, percussion). After two EPs and the debut album Sugarcoat, Crush follows up with power indie pop. Together they classify their new record as the poppiest song collection in the Crush universe so far. Upbeat mood included!

You can do all kinds of things with your own past. You can put a filter over it, fade out negative things with a transfigured view and surrender to a nostalgic idea. One can separate oneself from it and completely suppress whole periods of time. Both not exactly the most sustainable. The Graz-based indie formation Crush doesn’t pursue either of these options. Instead, Past Perfect is a collection of honest snapshots that may even have been taken years ago. The album title is no coincidence: past perfect tense is often described as the completed past tense. Some of the songs were written before the pandemic – “maybe that’s why the songs feel so far away,” says singer and guitarist Christina Lessiak, who is responsible for the lyrics in Crush. For the band, Past Perfect feels like an old photo album that you can dig out and revisit past situations and stages of your life. In the here and now, with a certain distance to the matter.

“Lighten Up,” Crush have always written behind their ears, in many of the ten songs there are enlightening moments in the sound. But one should not be deceived by the upbeat melodic progressions: in terms of content, the Graz band repeatedly encounters inner shadow beings – as in Monsters. Mental health, fears or depression are some of the topics that crawl out from under the bed at night as little monsters and want to be seen. In their music, Crush try to deal with these beasts in a conciliatory way.