CRASH KELLY - Hard, Sweet & Sticky
by Martin Popoff

People throw around the word glam when talking about the confection that is Crash Kelly, but the cool thing about it is Sean and his gang have taken the term to task, to its essence. This is not the rote glam of American junk culture and hair. Au contraire, the band's second album, Electric Satisfaction (out now on Liquor And Poker Music), speaks to the wildly diverse and divergent glam of fab England circa '72 to '74, as well as obscure power pop, even evoking a certain dependable - maybe even innocent, maybe na•ve - singer-songwriter vibe amongst the 11 enigmatic originals on offer.

Fact is, Sean knows classic rock, and you should know Crash Kelly.

"I guess the main difference is that this one definitely has more of a live feel, in that it was conceived with an actual band in mind," begins Sean, contrasting the new record with the Penny Pills debut. "The first record was a studio project, that involved two people, myself and my co-producer. This one, I think I wrote more specifically with a live rock band in mind. There's just two guitars, one in the left, one in the right. It's probably a bit more streamlined, a bit more within a classic rock sense, I guess."

Sean speaks to the complexity of nailing the idea of glam, and its relationship to this band. "It's definitely a culmination of two different influences. Glam to me means early '70s, to mid 70s British stuff like The Sweet, T. Rex, David Bowie. So I think it's a marriage of that with the early Sunset Strip stuff. Because that's what I grew up with. Guys like Motley Crue and Ratt... essentially what they were doing was taking those early glitter band riffs and sleazing them up a bit (laughs). And I think it's a result of those two things. But I also try to add a little character, a little Thin Lizzy, a touch of class maybe with the lyrics. Try to get it above the crotch a little bit (laughs)."

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