More about: Creeper

Last summer’s Sex, Death & The Infinite Void was a colossal album for Creeper. Landing them at number 6 in Album of the Year’s highest rated releases of 2020 (and 11 on our own list), it also landed them in a Top 5 Album Charts battle with Fontaines D.C. and Taylor Swift.

The response was tremendous, even if they haven’t been able to tour it yet. So imagine the surprise when Creeper announced that they were following it up with their American Noir EP, exactly a year after the album’s release. American Noir continues the story of Roe, an angel sent to Earth to fall in love with Annabelle and ultimately die for the sins of the town of Calvary. It’s a tough move, following on from such a huge success. So how did Creeper manage to make an EP even better than the album? We don't know...but they did. 

‘Midnight’ was the EP’s first single, arriving alongside the surprise announcement. If ‘Midnight’ was the only song on the EP, it would still be worth a 10/10 rating. The piano intro elicits the Pavlovian response of turning the volume up as high as it will go without even thinking. This is a song to be blasted from the rooftops. As they build up to the theatrical chorus, Will Gould is practically howling the words “Come on, I’m ready / I’m ready, come on / I’m ready”. Pure magic.

This song sets the tone for the whole album, which is rife with such theatricality. Both ‘Midnight’ and ‘Ghosts Over Calvary’ are pure rock opera at their cores. All-consuming guitars are backed up with flashes of piano that wouldn’t sound out of place in a musical. This isn’t a massive change from Sex, Death & The Infinite Void if you consider tracks like ‘Thorns Of Love’ and ‘Annabelle’, but on American Noir they’ve amped it up more than we previously thought was possible. This level of drama is clearly where Creeper thrive, pushing the listener out of their comfort zone and into a more interesting world.

Another exciting development on this EP is keyboardist Hannah Greenwood’s vocal presence. We’ve heard her before on showstoppers like ‘Crickets’ and ‘Four Years Ago’, but she takes the reigns on four of American Noir’s tracks. She has a breathtaking voice, and these tracks will without a doubt be a welcome addition to Creeper’s live setlists. Narratively of course, it makes a lot of sense. American Noir is a funeral for Roe, so hearing Annabelle’s perspective and exploring grief is a big part of the new EP.

It's not all singing though. As Sex, Death & The Infinite Void was interspersed with spoken word performances read by Patricia Morrison, American Noir opens with ‘Midnight Militia’, read by Gould. It sets the dark tone for the EP, with sombre backing music that reminds you a movie soundtrack—something that would play when first meet the supervillain antagonist. There are two more instrumentals falling in the middle and at the end of the album which carry the tone through. Sonically, they lie somewhere between The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds album and the electronic, retro soundtracks of TV series like Stranger Things and Loki.

You could spend a lifetime analysing the details in American Noir. Creeper took on a Herculean task following up on the near-perfect Sex, Death & The Infinite Void and somehow, they’ve made an even better record than they did last summer. If you predicted that last year, it would almost be unbelievable. Is this the end of this musical era, or will we hear from Roe and Annabelle again? Who knows, but whatever Creeper do next, it’s going to be brilliant.

American Noir EP arrives 30 July via Warner Records.

More about: Creeper