Album Review: We Love You So Bad by Kids on a Crime Spree

What we might term the ‘art-crime complex’ runs from Jean Genet (and further back to De Quincey) through to David Bowie’s extraordinary (and extraordinarily misunderstood) 1995 opus Outside. There’s a tension here between backward-looking Romanticism and the diagnostics inherent in investigation of crime (whether that investigation happens at the level of representation or at the meta-level of the representer). This tension is embodied in the work of Kids On A Crime Spree.

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Mario Hernandez has a long history of making really good, really fun and exciting pop records with his old bands Ciao Bella and From Bubblegum to Sky. Kids on a Crime Spree is his new band, We Love You So Bad is their debut, and it’s the simplest, most immediate record Hernandez had made yet. Also, maybe the best.

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The players in Kids on a Crime Spree aren’t as young as their name might suggest, nor do their sweet pop tunes sound all that dangerous. Then again, that’s part of the appeal to Mario Hernandez’s new musical project. As an alter ego of sorts for him—a departure from the lush, polished pop songs he wrote for his other band From Bubblegum to Sky—he seems to be enjoying it, crafting a band name that makes him seem like some sneering teens from Brooklyn and mining the sort of ‘60s pop-rock that is all the rage with that same group of kids.

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In indie music, there seems to be a new trend popping up every year or so. One of the latest examples is lo-fi surf rock. Done right, you get bands like Best Coast and Wavves. Unfortunately, not every group that comes along on the ride can have the same level of success. While Kids on a Crime ….

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