Crywank - Narcissist On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
A couple years ago, this guy called James appeared out of nowhere and started posting his album all over the internet for people to hear. It was called James Is Going To Die Soon and it was under the name Crywank and I’m guessing that a lot of people checked it out because the name Crywank made them emit a childish little giggle. What they got when they unzipped that folder they downloaded from Mediafire, though, was probably some of the most startlingly honest music they’d ever heard. Folk punk in its truest form, the guy could barely play his guitar, with a lot of songs being simple repetition of a frantic strumming pattern whilst he sang his lungs out in a cracked voice, laying everything bare, often just losing control and yelling the bleak, desperate lyrics of love, loss and loneliness.
I discovered Crywank at his first show, opening for Andrew Jackson Jihad towards the end of 2010. People were already singing his songs back at him, a testament to the infectious nature and overwhelming, near voyeuristic appeal of James Clayton’s songwriting. I downloaded the album the next day and was hooked. I also met James at that show and kind of got to know him as part of the Manchester scene and was relatively shocked as his music spread, and I would see people in America or Europe talking about him. I guess that’s the benefit of giving your music away for free – you won’t make any money (duh), but if it’s even halfway listenable it’ll spread like crazy. It helps that James has always been reasonably open on his tumblr blog too, allowing listeners to feel even more of a connection to his songs.
Anyway, he’s finally done a new record and it is more of the same. Well. It was recorded in his dining room whereas the first one was (I think) done in his bedroom. He’s singing about different situations this time too – the last one was mostly explicitly about a breakup, and this one deals more generally with themes of overwhelming sadness. And although he’s posted a lengthy monologue on tumblr apologising for not having got better at guitar, I think he actually has – whereas most of the songs on the first album were basically just battering an acoustic guitar as hard as he could, this time things are quieter and more complex. His singing is a bit gentler, too, and the recording is generally a bit cleaner. It seems less pissed off than the first, but certainly a bit sadder and bleaker. It’s called Narcissist On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown because that’s pretty much exactly what you’re getting.
The songwriting is just as frank as it ever was, and perhaps even more literate this time round. It might make some people cringe, but you can’t argue with the frank honesty of ’Roger Ebert said “If you have to ask what it symbolizes then it didn’t”/and I try to work my way around this by being blatant/I’ve got tonnes of wasted metaphors across my writing pad/but the only thing I feel honest in expressing is the fact that I am sad’. If you don’t pay too much attention, then it’s a fairly amateurish lo-fi acoustic album, but if you take a second to look a little closer then it can be a tough listen.
Basically, when you’ve got too many punk songwriters pining for/whining about America regardless of whether they live there or have even actually been or not, writing too many songs about sailors despite living in heavily landlocked towns or cities, spending too much time looking back on decades they weren’t even born in, or diluting their songs with overblown full band arrangements, Crywank is incredibly important, with an approach that drags folk punk crying and wanking back to square one. Authenticity is a big talking point in music. Is this band or that singer authentic? Are they genuine? Well, I can say with absolute certainty that James fuckin’ Clayton is the most authentic and genuine songwriter I have ever heard. You’d do well to listen to him.
9/10