Making music is hard work, and if you choose to make it your life’s work, well good luck. The promises of easy wealth and fame that once accompanied the rock star lifestyle have all but evaporated along with the traditional music industry’s dominance. Perhaps your goals are aesthetic rather than financial, but even then the world seems to have moved past “the myth of the solitary artist.” Retromania, the Internet, everything available always – what use is there for you anymore now?
Derek Stanton must have wrestled with these ideas both as the leader of Awesome Color, his former group, as well as Turn to Crime, who debuted last year with Can’t Love. Yet whatever outlet he’s fronted – from Awesome Color’s proto-punk anomie to Turn to Crime’s post-punk catatonia – this Detroit artist’s uncompromising attitude goes beyond simplistic notions of money, celebrity, or self-expression, instead operating on his own terms. That mindset hasn’t lost any of its determination on Actions, Turn to Crime’s sophomore LP; if anything Derek Stanton has doubled down on his tenets.
Awesome Color may have been indebted to the raw power of Detroit bands such as MC5 or The Stooges, but at the same time, rather than paying an empty, half-hearted homage to those acts, Derek Stanton and company made a statement entirely their own, releasing three exceptional full-length records that used those influences as a jumping off point.
On Turn to Crime’s first album, Can’t Love, Derek Stanton distanced himself from the Detroit forebears of his previous project; his new band looked instead to the sepulchral synths of Suicide and the wintry ambiance of Brian Eno as their muses. Bandmates Dorian Foerg and Ian Saylor brought an insistent beat to Stanton’s formerly thrashing fits of rage, bringing them into focus.
Actions takes Turn to Crime further down that path of contained chaos, stripping anything extraneous from Can’t Love’s template, leaving behind an aerodynamic rocket that burns through seven tracks in under 40 minutes. “This Is What You Wanted” starts off the record with the ominous sound of a muted synth drone, and “Feels Right” closes the album on a similar note. That it feels so self-contained for a work named Actions seems fitting.
As with Awesome Color, the references to the past serve a greater purpose than mere tribute; they are the springboard Turn to Crime use as inspiration. Actions is a forward-looking rock album, but it might not appear that way at surface level. Rather, it takes some time before it becomes clear where, exactly, Turn to Crime are headed.
Take, for example, the title track, which recalls post-Stooges Iggy Pop and bridges Derek Stanton’s two groups with its ethereal sounds and freezer-burned melody. In a voice damn near defeated by what he’s describing, Stanton sings: “All that fucked-up shit/ Goin’ on in Detroit/ You know we’ve got to get/ Get to the point.”
But defeated Stanton is not, and that seems to be the point; in the same song, he states “Actions speak louder than words.” When the traditional avenues of success or fulfilment are no longer available, there are those who give up and those who go another route. Dan Stanton forged a new path with Turn to Crime, albeit one that borrowed from the best of his predecessors. Actions proves there is no think, there is no say – there is only do.
Stream Actions below: