Crystal Castles Issue #39

Breaking Glass

By Rachel Rabbit White
Published: March 1st, 2009 | 10:02am

To call Alice Glass an enigmatic front-woman is an understatement: the singer is practically a ghost. She quickly disappears after live shows, and is notoriously absent from interviews.

It seems the only way to evoke Glass is through the 8-bit thrash and electro melodies of her band, Crystal Castles. When her spirit does grace the stage it is in a strobe-lit frenzy. The energy of the band resides in Glass as she flits and flies across the stage in a ferocious blur, her voice clear but raw as she ignites the audience into fits of dancing.

Infamous for their raucous shows, Crystal Castles saw a Glastonbury set cut short when a wild-eyed Glass climbed speakers and hurled herself into a sea of screaming audience. A show at a store in London ended with fans smashing coffee tables and an L.A. gig got so riotous that police brought in a helicopter to break it up.

20-year-old Glass has been in bands since the age of 14 when, as the story goes, she left home due to a teenaged existential crisis. By 15, Glass was fronting all-girl noise band Fetus Fatale. It was then that she met Ethan Kath, the other half of Crystal Castles.

In 2005, during the band’s first recording session, a microphone test was accidentally recorded, delivering an unexpected first single. “Alice Practice.” The song wound up on Myspace and the blogosphere pounced. It wasn’t long before record labels started batting their lashes toward the Castles.

When, in 2008, Glass topped NME’s annual “Cool List” the UK mag probed her for a response, asking “Does cool even mater?” The shadowy performer — still every bit the existentialist — answered like a true apparition, saying simply, “Nothing matters. We’re all dust.”