Crooks & Nannies – Real Life | Album Review
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Grand Jury Music
Is this real life? It feels really bad sometimes.
Max Rafter and Sam Huntington, better known as Crooks & Nannies, are here to ask the questions that have been on all of our minds the last few years. The duo met in High School and began making music together (formerly as The Original Crooks and Nannies) before seemingly taking time off after their 2016 release Ugly Laugh. Seven years and a handful of singles later, they’ve returned with Real Life, an innovative and haunting record chronicling the beauty and horror of coming to understand yourself.
Real Life begins with chirping bugs and the hum of outside, starting the Huntington-led “N95,” an evocative song about losing a loved one to illness and wanting them to know who you really are before it’s too late. Her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2020, just days after she started hormone therapy. After his passing, the duo started writing the songs for Real Life in the cabin he had been building before his diagnosis.
The cabin itself is woven into the record–from beginning to end, you feel as though you’re sitting on the porch with a friend, trading cigarettes and stories from the past few years of your life. The brilliance of “N95” is in its simplicity. It only takes two verses to completely crush you: “I tell you I’m a woman while you sit with the dog / On the bed in the room where I put on the bras / Cause you die in a week either way / So I won’t wait.” Sonically, it feels like a spaceship slowly starting up, abducting you into the world of Crooks & Nannies, before drowning you in a final chorus of the word “wait” that stretches on for nearly a minute.
The contrast between the duo’s songwriting is a great strength throughout Real Life, and the second track- lead single and Max Rafter-led “Temper”- features some of their best lyrics like “giving gives pleasure, but it means I gotta work a little harder / power gives pleasure easily” and “it doesn’t have to meet my every need / a seagull in a parking lot still eats.” Musically, it’s a song that could easily be straightforward, but Crooks & Nannies pepper in growling background vocals, buried screams, and guitars that burn through you like lasers before ending as abruptly as it began.
“Cold Hands,” one of my favorite tracks from the record, features Huntington singing about someone who has supported her through indecision and uncertainty. Crooks & Nannies are adept at painting a picture with sound instead of lyrics. When Huntington sings, “It's flooding in the b a s e m e n t,” the way it’s sung physically takes you down to the basement and makes you feel like you’re drowning there with all her things. Another thing they do incredibly well is creating dynamic moments, making full use of their range. “Cold Hands” is a song that starts and remains mostly soft-spoken- until the end when it erupts in booming swell bass, stinging guitars, and record scratches. Yes, record scratches. And it works incredibly well.
On “Big Mouth Bass,” Rafter sings about the unique bond of a friendship with someone who understands you. Breaking plates and laughing together. The song feels like sitting in the grass on a warm day and teeters back and forth from soft country to Motion-City-Soundtrack-esqe synths. Some of the song's best moments are the contrast between the huge, layered guitars and vocals before cutting to just an acoustic guitar and Rafter’s twang-tinged voice.
The undeniable centerpiece of the record is “Growing Pains,” a song that speaks on the struggles of transitioning and coming to terms with who you are. With lyrics like “I hurt myself bad without blinking and wanna know why that’s a thing that I do,” Huntington is digging all the bad parts from inside herself and presenting them to you, the listener. The fear of hurting those closer to you without meaning to is universal, and “Growing Pains” nails that feeling before ultimately ending on a positive note: “I don’t wanna die / I wanna do something right.” The vocal effects when she sings “I’m moving through space and time” sonically align you with the lyrics, making you feel like you’re moving with them. Similarly, there’s a persistent “tick and tick and tick and tick” of time in the aforementioned “Big Mouth Bass.”
“Country Bar” and “The Gift” are the next two Rafter-led tracks, the former about taking apart a relationship like a mechanical bull before piecing it back together and attempting to make everything fit, while the latter is possibly exhuming the end of a relationship. Both songs are heartwarming and insightful windows into the struggle that comes with these seismic changes in a partnership. “The Gift” features some of Sam Huntington’s most intricate drum work and more poignant lyrics from Rafter - “I touched the pan / yeah I knew it was hot / so why’d I touch it? / being carefully cruel to the things that you love is still careless.”
Track eight, “Immaculate,” begins with the screeching and creaking of violins, creating an eerie horror movie-like vibe at the start of the track that permeates the whole song. Another high point of the record; the lyrics reference Rafter’s struggle with alcohol. The ending will stop you in your tracks as all the music cuts out, leaving just Max’s voice along with a pitched-down backup singing:
I won’t have another drink
cause I don’t wanna be that guy anymore
but it hurts to sit and think
I think I better take a walk
The record ends with “Weather” and “Nice Night.” While “Weather” was written over the course of a nighttime bike ride by Huntington, “Nice Night” feels like the return from that bike ride and places us back on the porch of the cabin where we began the record. Musically, “Weather” leans into the band’s darker side, constantly wondering if we who are makes us bad. The heavy, slamming guitars reflect that inner conflict as Huntington sings, “I’m fucking not playing, don’t leave me alone / I don’t wanna find out what I’m capable of” before cutting out to a good 15 seconds or so of silence, giving us time to think about what we just heard. Silence is something Crooks & Nannies use throughout their record to great success. In my opinion, the silence they leave us with is just as important as their music. “Nice Night” harkens back to the theme of friendship, rounding out the record with a beautiful, drifting saxophone and Rafter accepting the horrors of being truly understood.
Crooks & Nannies have created something incredible with Real Life that already feels like it will stand the test of time. It’s one of those rare records that lingers in your mind, beckoning you to come back over and over again until you can fully understand all of its inner and outer workings. It’s the friend you return to while the strobe of the porch flickers on and off, so bright with raw truth and talent that you have to shield your eyes. It’s an honest reflection of who we are, the good and the bad, that I will continue to return to no matter how much it hurts to hear. Like a moth to the light.
My name is Alex, and I make music as Birthday Dad! I released my debut album, The Hermit, last year and have vinyl available now from Refresh Records! Follow me on Twitter and everything else! @iambirthdaydad
