Creeper, America At Night
Roadrunner Records

American Noir, the epilogue to Creeper’s stunning 2020 record Sex, Death and the Infinite Void, is due out later this month, and latest taste America At Night confirms that it’s the best of Creeper concentrated down and served over ice. At 8 tracks long, American Noir sprawls wider than your average EP, but as SD&TIV gave us a generous sixteen songs, this is definitely the theatrics we know to expect from Creeper condensed into a shot glass. Following their previous record’s blueprint of ‘lead with a stomping rock tune, and follow it up with the swaying, seductive ballads’, America At Night is another dramatic, soaring slice of melodrama – in other words, more of what Creeper do best.

Midnight set the pace for the EP, turning up the drama by incorporating more gorgeous vocal contributions from Hannah Greenwood, and America At Night is another dark duet. It’s an immensely controlled tune – the intensity comes not from big punky riffs or a big beat, but from the restraint of the ominous pace, the slow build-up of texture, the chromatic shading of the chords. Picture Will Gould and Hannah sitting at the piano of an apocalyptic California bar right before close, drifting out of the door and meandering amongst the ‘golden arches’, the billboards in ‘coca-cola red’ and ‘pepsi-cola blue’ – Creeper’s Americana is haunting and heavy.

America At Night may well be one of Creeper’s most cinematic tracks yet – the magnitude of the keening guitar solo, the crescendo so subtle you barely notice it until you’re wrapped up in the song’s intensity, every detail of the production prowling in the song’s undertones. American Noir so far is Creeper totally focussed and somehow still unexpected, and utterly in control.

Hear the EP in full July 30th. Preorder here.