With a new lineup and a new setlist, the Manchester band tell us about their exciting evolution over the past few months.

“We always used to call ourselves a shoegaze band but we’re trying to veer away from that with the new stuff.”

“What did you call it in the group chat the other day, ‘Dirty collage rock?’ Maybe it sounds too much like dirty protest.”

Whilst cruush can’t quite put their finger on how they want to describe their new direction, it’s certainly a significant shift. It feels like shoegaze is having another moment with the likes of my bloody valentine and Slowdive topping festival bills next summer, but the Manchester four piece are keen to pull from a wider range of influences and avoid being cornered as a revivalism group. Bassist Bruno Evans, who completed the current incarnation of the band when he joined last summer, says: “We all love Wednesday, I think that’s pretty gospel. They’re using it [shoegaze] but exploring other genres and seeing what else they can do with it whilst staying true to that influence. That’s been really important to us, especially in the last year.”

Since the band’s inception at the Manchester branch of BIMM seven years ago, cruush have always been evolving, both in terms of personnel and sound. They’ve released a string of singles and two EPs on Heist or Hit (Her’s, Westside Cowboy) but with a fresh line-up and the change of the sound that they’re pursuing, they feel like a completely different entity. In fact, most of the music that they’ve put on record is being squeezed out of the setlist by their reinvigoration. “It’s been really cool to try out some stuff,” drummer Fotis Kalantzis explains. “It’s going to be pretty much all unreleased stuff soon.”

“We love everything we’ve put out in the past, but we’re just so happy with where we’re at as a band now” adds Amber Warren.

It could easily have been a different story. Balancing university studies and then later service jobs with a creative project as all-encompassing as cruush has been for its members isn’t easy at the best of times. Over the last year, things were pretty desperate. There was an extended period in which the band felt like nothing was going their way. They had the plug pulled on a European tour and then a producer that they’d planned to work with long-term left the music industry altogether. It’s not hard to imagine how that kind of rancid luck could have been terminal for the band, but they chose to move forward.

They got in touch with Owen Turner at Sickroom Studios at the end of an early-morning hike soundtracked largely by the two Brown Horse records that Turner had produced. “I honestly think that he’s the reason that we’re so happy with the new stuff,” says Warren. Kalantzis adds that one of the songs that they took down to the Norwich studio had existed in various forms since around the time that 2023 EP ‘Good Times Now, All The Time’ was written but had never felt quite ready to be recorded until it was “carried over the finishing line” by Turner. The result is the best and most distinct music that cruush have released to date. They use the wall of fuzzy guitars that defined their earlier work more sparingly, choosing their moments to whack you over the head with distortion and then letting you come back around with a real melodic clarity. ‘Rupert Giles’, which they released last Friday, is the standout song of their catalogue to date. “I think we’ve focused on writing songs now that have very distinct parts rather than having layers upon layers” Evans explains. “We want to be a little bit looser with it, I think. A bit more slacker-y” Kalantzis adds.

Once the new sonic direction was captured in those recording sections, the band could start to think about the visual side of things. That’s something that has always been very important to Warren in particular and it’s something that goes beyond cover art. The first EP had two runs of home-burned CDs, each of which came with pressed flowers in the case and a lyric booklet. Their second one came out on vinyl, each copy containing an exclusive zine designed and created by the band. “I think I really enjoy that side of it, trying to make it all look how the music sounds. Building the world around it,” Warren says. “If there’s a theme I’ll build the visuals around that theme. These newly recorded songs aren’t that deep really, the lyrics were kind of jumbling of different notes – so I kind of went for a literal dirty collage, because that’s what we’re saying we sound like.”

“I think we really just want to launch this new sound,” Kalantzis says to a round of head nods when asked about the plans for the future. “We’ve got a fair few shows coming up, the new single, maybe another one not too long after that. There’s loads of new stuff. Almost, like, an album’s worth you could say…”