The two core members of Crocodiles have made inter-city writing, recording and touring work. Despite living in very different parts of the world, the pair of Brandon Welchez (vocals, guitar and based in Los Angeles), Charles Rowell (guitar with a home in Paris) have kept the band alive and prospering. And they’re now well into their second decade of work in this form.
When asked if he ever looked back on the group’s career, to say 2011 or so, when the band’s name was new and ascendent on the indie rock circuit, Welchez said that he doesn’t give that period a lot of looks. But when he does peek at YouTube videos of the band in that moment, he gets a variety of good feels.
“That was a really fun time,” he said in an early April phone interview. “It was really fun with our first, longtime lineup. Saw a lot of the world and put out nothing but good records. Our drummer quit to start a family and our keyboardist quit to become an extremely successful graphic artist. How I’ve always seen our band is our trying to play with nice, talented, cool people. They stay with us a few years and move on.”
In doing so, they leave openings for new players to come in and add their stamp to the band’s songs, which now date back to the group’s 2008 arrival in San Diego.
The band’s live sets for this year (be it in the United States or Europe, where two different backing groups support the pair) will feature a catalog-spanning batch of tracks, including a chunk of cuts from 2023’s “Upside Down in Heaven.”
“We have quite a bit to choose from now, about 80 songs,” Welchez said. “Being that we’re promoting a new album, about half of the set will be songs from the new record and the other half a mix-and-match from over the years. Some of these we’ve been playing for 15 years. We’re playing our first single and some of our very first songs.”
Though a service like Spotify shows that the group has no small amount of avid listeners, Welchez said, “We’ve never had a real hit, so there’s maybe a little less pressure. There’re definitely fan favorites that we’re playing. Since we’re promoting a new record, which has its own style, we’ll choose older songs that make it cohesive and fun and energetic. There’s a lot of variety in our catalog and we can kind of put together different sets. This one will definitely have more high energy songs.”
True of other albums, there’s a mix in place.
“We’ve been called shoegaze/punk,” Welchez said. “All sorts of things get mentioned. We’re ’80s throwback, ’60s throwbacks. We’re all of that and none of it.”
As with artists the world-round, the COVID era put a stamp on the lyrical approach to ‘Upside Down’ as “the lyrics are somewhat of a bummer though the songs can be poppy. A lot of these songs were written during the pandemic, with a lot of negative stuff going on in general,” Welchez said.
That noted, if some negative vibes might be hinted at in the lyrics, the band’s feedback-drenched rock ‘n’ roll might wash away some of the angst. Or maybe not.
As Welchez told Brooklyn Vegan, “‘Degeneration’ was written in the boiling, diseased summer of 2020 where I found myself overworked, underpaid and choking on wildfire smoke. The free time I had was spent doom-scrolling the latest COVID death toll or inundating myself with news of literal fascists marching the streets. I found myself floating on a cloud of anger, fear and frustration. Rather than allow myself to fall into bad old habits or succumb to my negative emotion.”
The first two singles — “Degeneration” and “Love Beyond the Grave” — paced the album’s early April arrival and there’s a full slate of cross-country touring readied for spring and summer, and Europe on deck for the fall.
At this point, Welchez is happy to be back in the business of touring.
“We’re both from San Diego,” he said, “and we’ve moved around a lot over the past 10 to 15 years. It’s not really any more difficult than it ever was. The only real issue is that we can’t do one-off shows, just tours. If we tour in Europe, Charles has European friends that are ready to play and if we play here (in the states), it’s just Charles who has to fly over, which saves us a lot of money and affords us the ability to play with various musicians around the world. We have a pool of around 10 or so people that we ask to play. There’ve been different lineups and different eras and drummers, especially, (who) add a lot to the personality and vibe. The style of the drummers really determines what type of show we can pull off.”
Crocodiles w/Lenguas Largas and Class
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, May 13
WHERE: Club Congress, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $12
INFO: hotelcongress.com
