Album Notes

"Black Crash's post-rock pop songs veer from dark and moody tracks recalling Joy Division to an anthemic opening track, "A Thousand Eyes," that soars like vintage U2. Hold tight for the title track's post-punk guitar heroics."
--Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pop music critic

"Manchester and Pittsburgh have a lot in common, when you think about it. Rainy industrial cities are no fun to grow up in, and they leave a disproportionate number of kids behind with nothing to relate to but their record collections and their guitars. Black Crash, the best-kept secret of the burgeoning Pittsburgh indie rock scene, takes their shoe-gazing Mancurian influences and boils them down into a sound that remains emotionally unguarded while it swaggers with confidence, feels universally relevant yet deeply personal, and triumphantly defines itself against a backdrop of everyday tragedy.

"A Thousand Eyes" opens the band's self-recorded debut Red Lights with a bang - Dean Aloise's furious tremolo picking rings out like an alarm while vocalist Ryan McElroy sighs "How did we let this happen?" sounding a lot like Richard Ashcroft without the rock star pose. Red Lights burns through a multitude of emotions and tempos in its too-short 36 minutes, from the radio-baiting "Comfort of Strangers" to the steady pulse of "La Mire," featuring guitars that explode in an echo chamber upon the recollection of wilder (and maybe better) days gone by. Black Crash hits their stride with "Slow Motion Picture," a ballad that claws its way out from a swamp of E-bow and delay and continues its stately march forward, oblivious to its own destruction. I can't imagine the album this band is capable of making with more resources at their disposal. Somebody, anybody, sign these guys so we can find out."
--Jon Zebrasky, The Big Takeover

"No band much enjoys being compared to another- favorably or not- yet somehow I can't help myself: Local rock quartet Black Crash are an almost perfectly even split of U2 and The Strokes. Not a bad combination when you think about it: You've got your political consciousness, your arena-rock anthems and your catchy pop hooks all in one place. The local media seem to agree: WXDX, WDVE, and WYEP are all playing cuts from Red Lights, the band's self-released long-player."
--Dan Eldridge, Pittsburgh City Paper

black crash is:
dean aloise - guitar, vocals
ryan mcelroy - guitar, vocals
rick logue - bass
matt ramey - drums