CROCODILES

Crocodiles have existed in various incarnations since 2008, evolving from the original core of Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell into the five-piece we see today. With two previous albums, 2009’s Summer Of Hate and 2010’s Sleep Forever, the band garnered righteous praise for their intoxicating blend of scuzzy, surfy, lo-fi noise pop and their thrilling live shows. But, finding themselves having to make a hasty exit from their San Diego hometown last spring, they headed to Europe, landing in Berlin to rehearse and record their superb third album, Endless Flowers.

Settling into an apartment on Berlin’s Gaudystraße last summer, the band thought they’d landed on their feet with free rehearsal space and unlimited refreshments when their neighbour, Helmut Katzenflugen, the manager of a local club, Ficken 2000, offered them a month’s residency at the club. Alas, the club’s proprietor had fired them before they finished their first set, so incensed was he by their “goddam racket” distracting the club’s naked dancers from flirting with the clientele and parting them from their cash. But the club remained a favourite hangout for the band during their months in Berlin it was where they befriended the local rough boys (handy when looking for “chemical aids” to the recording process) and provided a nocturnal incubator for an album of glorious pop nuggets that arrive cloaked in a heavy disguise of noise and echoing weirdness.