Drifting through its grasp together
Gilding guide this blood for me
Pull me close, release me never
Feeling fangs so tenderly
Ahead of their gig at Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig, Sacramento’s Creux Lies celebrates with Jubilate, the first single from Jubilation, the band’s forthcoming third album, due at summer’s end through Young and Cold Records, and it wastes little time announcing that their old cathedral gloom has learned a few new dance steps. The bass is wound tight, the drums keep hustling, and the synths move with the smooth contempt of a machine.
There’s a breed of post-punk tracks that spends its energy admiring its own cheekbones. Jubilate has other appetites: motion, contact, release, and a little unabashed absurdity. The band has talked about this as a hinge point, a doorway into the next record, and the word feels right: you hear familiar Creux Lies architecture: grand outlines, romantic pressure, the heavy perfume of old rooms, while the track pushes its hips toward dark disco and house music’s clean command. Depeche Mode, Visage, and Blancmange are useful ghosts at the edge of the party, watching Sacramento’s black-clad children find a fresh route to the floor.
The hook “You’ve got a good hold on me” lands with the cruel simplicity of any attachment worth fearing. Nobody needs an eight-page seminar on that line. Everybody who has been pinned by another person’s charm, mercy, boredom, beauty, or convenient cruelty knows the deal, and Creux Lies have the decency to deliver it as chant, confession, and dare in one breath. The central cry, “Bury deep the rumination! Jubilate!” is where the record stops circling its own skull and throws the skull at the wall. That line could have turned into corny self-help detonation, yet here it has bite because the song has already shown the drag of mental repetition. You can hear the loop tightening before it breaks. Then the beat shoves the body forward.
The video, directed by Creux Lies and shot over four years in Los Angeles, San Diego, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Sacramento, turns that idea into a joke with wings, fangs, and probable rabies paperwork. A giant bat wanders through the underbelly of cities, bumping into scene figures like one of Chuck E. Cheese’s cousins after a difficult psychic quarter. The goth imagination has spent decades confusing severity with depth, and this marvelous beast gives Jubilate a badly needed grin without draining its tension. It turns the release into a romp through civic grime, clubland mythology, and mascot tragedy, which sounds insane until you remember that half the best music videos have always been built from batty ideas pursued with religious commitment.
Watch the video for Jubilate below:
Creux Lies formed in Sacramento, California, bringing a sleek, romantic strain of post-punk and darkwave out of the city’s underground. Across their previous releases, the band has built a sound of dramatic basslines, sweeping synths, sharp guitar work, and vocals that carry equal parts desire, dread, and devotion. Their music has always leaned toward the grand and nocturnal, but never as museum-piece revivalism; Creux Lies work best when old club architecture becomes a living room for present-tense longing.
With Jubilate, that room opens wider. The single pulls their darker instincts under brighter house lights and sees which ones can still move. The track’s pleasure comes from pressure, from the sense that release has to be earned by pushing through your own repetitions until they turn useful. Jubilate is a command, a punchline, a title, and maybe a survival tactic. It is also, crucially, a blast: sleek enough for the club, strange enough for the alley behind it, and alive to the ridiculousness of needing anyone this much.
The single arrives as Creux Lies head to Europe for a run of dates, including an appearance at Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, followed by shows in Milan, Bristol, and London. More dates are expected to be announced soon.
Creux Lies will also return stateside for Murder of Crows Fest in New York City on September 4th.
Listen to Jubilate below and order the single here.
Tour Dates (more to be announced soon)
- May 24: Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, Germany
- May 27 C.I.Q. in Milan, Italy
- May 29: Zed Alley in Bristol, United Kingdom
- May 30: The Old Blue Last in London, United Kingdom
- September 4 Murder of Crows Fest NYC
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