(Photo credit: Tell All Your Friends PR)

San Diego-based indie pop/glam-punk act Crocodiles have announced their sixth album Dreamless for an October 21st release. The up-and-coming band has been consistently releasing quality breezy pop albums since 2009, the most recent of which was last year’s Boys. The first single off of their upcoming EP was just released and can be listened to below.

The new single surprisingly shaves off some of the punk edge featured in Crocodiles’ earlier work. The airy synths lift and acoustic guitar riffs help to accentuate the sentimental tone of the lyrics. The reverb of their previous releases has been replaced with an ethereal dream-pop sound. The incredibly upbeat percussion, silky-smooth bass, and soft-spoken singing work wonders establishing the aesthetic of a hopeless romantic stuck inside his own head. The lyrics paint a darker picture than the instrumentation would suggest, however. The protagonist is warning the telepathic object of his desire to stay away from him, as she wouldn’t like the darkness buried within his mind. This contrast highlights Crocodiles’ trademark ability to insert dark humor into their work that is coated with a sugary sweet exterior, enough so that a casual listener could completely misinterpret the tone of the song.

The main theme of the album is, in fact, the band’s fading lack of faith in their dreams. Regarding this, member Brandon Welchez said,

“I suffered insomnia throughout the whole session. I was literally dreamless. The past two years had been fraught with difficulty for us – relationship troubles, career woes, financial catastrophe, health issues. In that pessimistic mindset it was easy to feel as if the dream was over.”

In pushing this dark aesthetic, the band has chosen to put much less emphasis on the punk guitars of their previous works. Trying new computerized sounds to replace these guitars both allows the band to experiment with new sounds and emphasis their depressed aesthetic.

Dreamless
01. Telepathic Lover
02. Maximum Penetration
03. Welcome to Hell
04. Im Sick
05. Go Now
06. Alta
07. Jumping on Angels
08. Time to Kill
09. Jailbird
10. Not Even in Your Dreams