Crown

With some of the fest’s top crowd pleasers on the books, it was back to the Arneson stage to catch up with another local band likely to make waves in the near future. Crown – the trio formed by guitarist/vocalist Carlos Zubillaga, bassist Josh Borchardt and drummer Oscar Webber – presented a perfect combination of blues, hallucinogen-induced effects and hair – hair flying everywhere. The crowning (ahem!) moment of this set was a beautifully dark cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” - Lyynks

By Matt Stieb
PUBLISHED: JULY 9, 2014

Mastered by Brian Lucey, the Columbus, Ohio, engineer who put the post-production touches on the past couple Black Keys records, Are These the Good Days? proves the worth of Crown’s change in process. Though the album varies considerably in style, there’s a strong sense of cohesion from its single creative session. “We all like albums where you get everything you crave and that’s what we were shooting for,” said Webber.

On “Prelude,” Crown start off with a thunderclap of backmasking, a backwards-played jam that sees Good Days’ most psychedelic moments. On the next cut, “Drone,” Borchardt and Zubilla team up for a highway hypnotic melody as the band drives into a momentous jam. On “Olympus,” Borchardt applies a McCartney-like “Come Together” line, knowing when to hold off on vocals and when to punch the song into the next gear.

The band takes a breath for “Methylone Man,” as Zubilla takes the song solo on mandolin. “You make us feel fine in some twisted way,” Zubilla sings softly over the fragile mandolin piece, about MDMA’s active ingredient. It’s an “I’m Waiting for my Man” trip, looking for a dealin’ Irishman the day after St. Patrick’s Day—a “short redhead guy wearing a Leperchaun outfit, like a bad movie,” said Zubillaga. “Later that night I was sitting there writing a joke song, but it turned out to be pretty good.”

To name the album, Crown took inspiration from the goosebump dialogue of HBO’s True Detective. Borchardt recalls an interview scene in which Marty Hart, Woody Harrelson’s character asks: “‘Are you living in the good days, do you even know that it’s happening? Does everything need to go to shit before you realize that those were the good days?’ That speaks to us right now. We’re working shitty jobs, but we’re playing music for fun. Are these the good days? Does it get better than this?”

On the final track, “One-Eyed Neal,” Crown seems to ride out on some surf rock, but quickly transitions to a massive slow-burner to light fire to the album’s end. It’s an impressive conclusion to a timely debut album, yet one that still upholds Crown’s status as a band best experienced live. When these three get together, there’s no rock ‘n’ roll direction that’s out of bounds. - San Antonio Current

BAND OF THE YEAR
CROWN
Buzz band Lonely Horse controlled the first half of the year with solid performances led by charismatic Nick Long; Crown appeared on my radar midway; and the year’s late surprise was Creatura, arguably the band most concerned with arranging a song until it explodes with transitions not heard since Aqualung-era Jethro Tull (OK, I’m a little out of control here, but you get the idea). Yet, what Josh Borchardt (bass, vocals), Venezuela’s Carlos Zubillaga (guitar, vocals) and Mexico’s Oscar Webber (drums) did was turn three different musical worlds into a psychedelic blues powerhouse that takes no prisoners live and makes me anxious to hear their first properly recorded full-length due out (cross your fingers) sometime
in 2014. - San Antonio Current