Crystal Castles loses vocalist Alice Glass

Alice Glass, member of Canadian electronic band Crystal Castles, announced Wednesday morning that she would be leaving co-member Ethan Kath after 10 years of working together. The band had recorded three full albums; their most recent, (III), was released in 2012. The break up after 10 years was surprising, especially as the band just finished touring in Mexico earlier this month. Glass posted that she would be embarking on her own solo career on her Facebook page.

“I am leaving Crystal Castles. My art and my self-expression in any form has always been an attempt towards sincerity, honesty, and empathy for others. For a multitude of reasons both professional and personal I no longer feel that this is possible within CC. Although this is the end of the band, I hope my fans will embrace me as a solo artist in the same way they have embraced Crystal Castles,” Glass wrote.

Ethan Kath met Glass when she was only 15 years old after seeing her perform as part of an all-girl punk band, Fetus Fatale. Kath recorded Glass’s vocals and produced several tracks, which became immensely popular online. Before long, the duo was touring and invited to play at well-known festivals worldwide including Glastonbury in England, Rockness in Scotland and Exit Festival in Serbia. Their live shows were known to be alluring, mysterious and riotous. In 2011, the band won the John Peel Award for Innovation at the NME Awards.

Fans of the band reacted with shock but maintained hope for the artists’ futures.

“I am so sad that Alice Glass is leaving Crystal Castles. Completely desolate. She’s a hot mamma with a bright future though, and I 100 percent believe that she will continue to be the creepy demon graveyard witch woman of electronic music,” sophomore Ruth Landry said.

This reaction is not surprising given Crystal Castles’s unique perspective on the world and the sound that reflects it. Their music tears at the listener with moody, dark synth beats accompanied by Alice’s ethereal, sometimes muffled and often shrieking vocals. This is not happy electronic music. It provides a voice for the damaged, the vulnerable and the self-destructive, but its somber quality also entrances listeners.

The band explored some of the demoralizing aspects of the world. Their song “Pap Smear” describes a loss of innocence. “You never got to bloom / They cut you from the stem / You’re innocent at birth / until you understand...Consistency of dirt/Insects that spun your silk / They wait for gratitude / They wait for mother’s milk,” Glass sings.

Loss of innocence is a recurring theme in Crystal Castles’s work, and Glass herself admits this in an interview with Pitchfork.

“Purity is an illusion. The idea of purity has been used as an excuse for calamities like honor killings, bride burnings, child molestation. Purification is genocide,” Glass said.

Even tracks that are only instrumental, like “Reckless,” give the listener a sense that they are confronted with something disturbed and out of equilibrium. The music understands a world that is not all enchanting, and it uses this quality to captivate fans who sometimes want to embrace the feeling of being sad or angry, maybe even seedy or disturbed.

It is fitting that Alice Glass is opposed to many of the messages mainstream media sends to young people, as she clearly tries to communicate a very different message to her listeners. In an interview with NME, Glass discussed the recent impact of popular music.

“I think a lot of kids are more sexualised now than they were now than they were years ago, and I’m not sure it’s a coincidence,” she says. “Like f*cking Katy Perry spraying people with her f*cking d*ck, her f*cking cum gun coming on f*cking children. And little girls, like six-year-old girls wearing a shirt with ‘I wanna see your [pea] cock’ on it... Don’t prey on vulnerable people like that. Don’t encourage little girls to get dressed up, to have cupcakes on their tits to get people to lick them off ‘cos that’s what you’re insinuating.”