This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, The Harlots may be in the gutter — but they’re looking up at the stars. “I wish I was alien — gorgeous, intelligent,” fantasizes singer Buck Garinger seconds into the band’s new CD. And if he can’t be Ziggy Stardust? “I’d settle for different.”
Well, he’s got nothing to worry about there. On the quartet’s sophomore disc (and major-label debut) Crawl Spaces, The Harlots may not be out of this world, but they’re certainly beautiful mutants. Although their stock in trade is the decadent, gleaming post-Bowie glam slam you’d expect from Robin Black’s former backing band, the dozen-song disc finds Garinger and his crewmates — brothers Lane and Lee on lead guitar and bass, along with drummer Mark Sawatzky — firing the retro-rockets and heading back through time, collecting pieces of their sound like little grey scientists gathering DNA samples.
From the ’60s, they extract the melodic essence of Beatle-pop; from the ’70s, the sugar-crunch of Cheap Trick; from the ’80s, the whistling synths of The Cars; from the ’90s, the crunching guitars of a million alt-rock bands; and from as recently as yesterday, the dusty melancholy and all-too-human passion of emo. Gene-spliced in the lab, decorated with thick blankets of vocal harmony and incubated into spacious, tightly wound creations like Josie, Mice, Hypnotize, Inertia and Crashing, these elements reassemble themselves into a new entity all their own — a sound that is simultaneously nostalgic, contemporary and futuristic. I don’t know what Buck thinks, but next to much of the one-dimensional fare around these days, it seems pretty otherworldly to me.
