Crippling Alcoholism, a moody-synthy-noisy-rock band, was formed by Tony Castrati (perhaps the biggest exception to nominative determinism because his singing voice is incredibly deep) in 2022. The band comes from Boston, a city that has spawned a disproportionate amount of bands with names that make your friends look at you weird when you mention them in conversation, and even weirder when you actually play a song. Looking at you, meth. In the past year or so, I’ve had the pleasure of watching their career take off from the sidelines as a fan– the release of their third album, “Camgirl” last September was met with critical acclaim and acted as their breakthrough release (which should’ve happened when they dropped their sophomore album, “With Love From a Padded Room,” but I digress).
Frontman Castrati was kind enough to let me interrogate him on his creative process and experiences with the band, especially in regards to the storytelling he so often incorporates in his lyrics. Every song on “With Love” has its own narrative, and “Camgirl” has an overarching storyline which is explored across the entire record. To write such narrative-heavy lyrics, Castrati shared that, “what I typically do is I write a narrative, which is like a shitty story or shittily written story, and nobody sees that. But that’s my guide, and then I write the lyrics through that, and it doesn’t always work out one-to-one.” This preference to explore story through lyrics has greatly influenced Castrati’s writing process.. “I’ll have people ask me, ‘what’s a good way to get better at writing lyrics,’ and I’ll just say, ‘read books, read novels,’ because that’s going to be the best way to exercise that part of your brain apart from reading other people’s lyrics,” he shared.
“There’s a lot of film and TV that makes its way in there. We have a new album coming out next year that was very David Lynch, so it’s much more Americana. There’s almost some doo-wop ‘50s shit going on there, like he used in Blue Velvet. I always loved his philosophy of not knowing– not being so concerned with every single layer having an explicit meaning, where that meaning can be revealed after the fact.”
Beyond film, Castrati’s literary interests have also informed his writing, with the occasional incorporation of allusions in the songs. “There’s a song on the second album called ‘Ottessa,’ which is a reference to the author of ‘Ottessa Moshfegh.’ I was really obsessed with her books and her take on life, where there’s this kind of hopelessness and despair, but also at the same time it’s very emotionally rich. I even love Cormac McCarthy. There’s some lyrics at the end of the song ‘Saran Wrapped Cash’ which are supposed to be the beginning of ‘Blood Meridian’ by Cormac McCarthy.”
While Castrati himself has not yet broached the publishing world, his ideas have been adopted by author Eliza Clark, who “ended up reaching out a while ago. She actually wrote a short story as part of a ghost story anthology that uses characters from ‘Camgirl’ and ‘With Love.’ Also, B. R. Jaeger, an underground horror author, helped me edit some of my lyrics, and then he also wrote some accompanying short stories for this upcoming album.”
While their first two albums attracted a largely middle-aged and miserable male audience, which Castrati and the band affectionately dubbed divorced dad core, “Camgirl” and their subsequent signing to The Flenser label expanded the sorts of people listening to their music. “There’s goth kids. There’ll be noise kids, noise people. There’ll be just normal looking people, they’re working a marketing job, corporate and they just fuck with it. People are interesting like that,” said Castrati. “But it’s good because I wanted to reach more people than that. I don’t want to be confined to a scene. It’s a pretty eclectic crew of people that come out to shows for sure.”
Part of the reason for their newly broadened reach is “Camgirl’s” use of catchy hooks, choruses and otherwise conventional song qualities thrown into incredibly unconventional structures and bastardized beyond belief. One such example is the single “Ladies’ Night,” which Castrati has described as the band’s attempt at writing a “fucked up LMFAO song.” It’s catchy– ridiculously so– but it’s still weird. “This song is hooky on its own, but we wanted to recontextualize it so it sounds a little more like fucked up and drugged out. If we just recorded this the way a normal pop song is recorded, there’s no real edge or anything different about it. A lot of that edge came from the production. You have a poppy song and our drummer is just going insane on drums or doing some weird hits, and then there’s a ton of reverb. We recorded his drums in a stairwell, so there’s a cavernous element to it,” said Castrati.
“For ‘Camgirl,’ and also sort of for ‘With Love,’ and this new album that we have, it was pretty much ‘if there isn’t a hook in the song, then it’s not making the album.’ And I don’t know if that’ll be a rule for all the albums, but it was just something because I think that hooks are a lost art sometimes. Especially in something like noise rock, or even a lot of popular music, they don’t even have hooks anymore.”
Signing to The Flenser, the ultimate gloom and doom label, was a decision Castrati was initially hesitant to make due to the potential loss of creative freedom. At the time, Crippling Alcoholism was signed to the label Portrayal of Guilt, a largely DIY label that allowed Castrati and the band to effectively do whatever they wanted with no strings attached. However, the choice to sign with the Flenser is one he does not regret. “They’ve been really great to us. They haven’t ever given me any sort of pushback on any creative decisions.”
While Crippling Alcoholism’s fourth album is on route to release, Castrati still has musical goals to fulfill beyond the write-and-release record cycle. “There’s so many things I would love to do. I would love to write an instrumental and then it’s a beat for some rapper. It could literally be anyone. I have my favorites, but you know, even a more underground rapper. I would love a Sexyy Red-Crippling beat.” Wouldn’t we all?
