“On the track ‘Green Lake,’ Pyle reflects on those beautiful, perfect days when you're just too glum to get out of bed, against a joyful '60s-girl-group sound, punctuated with a fluttering flute and a guest saxophone solo from Adrienne Kerr. It's a feeling that many of us struggled with during the pandemic, being isolated from friends and family during lockdown.
As summer sets upon us, Sundae Crush remind us to ‘Get up! Get out! We've been waiting for you.’ See ya at the lake.”
“Something Sundae Crush shares with the Velvet Underground is that the band is very dreamy, and sunshiny, but the lyrics can be quite dark. Jena Pyle, who's the lyricist and the vocalist, she's unafraid to look hard at toxic relationships... She also writes very forthrightly about depression. You might not get that on first listen. But if you spend a little time with these songs, you'll see beyond the shiny, happy side.”
"It seems that SUNDAE CRUSH quartet was founded somewhere in the 60’s. Even though it’s not all about surf-rock, they do bring you a feeling of that era you could hear in their music. So far, there are not only feelings. But a certain esthetics they’re following. It’s amazing how the band could find their own identity mixing all these styles and tendencies they’re keen on to explore. ‘Lick It Up’ is a good example of what they’ve reached with this record. Acoustic proximity that practically destroys the distance between listeners and performers. With all the background sounds and the arrangements, it still feels that these four musicians are not more than at arms’ length distance."
"From the sunrise of Kiss 2 Death until the moment Dudes Being Guys sets off into the sunset, A Real Sensation is all dune-trotting drums grooving along under prickly yet succulent guitar licks, neatly lassoed together by Jena’s sweet tales from Wild Western trails. At times, introspective as a conversation with none but your trusty steed, like What Do I Need. At others, a blissed-out or a pissed off ‘Yee-haw!’ screaming from the saloon’s bar top with Good Boy. Either way, being a technicolor cow-poke has never spurred so much glitz and glam as it does with Sundae Crush’s arsenal of toy gun bangers.
Whether you’re galloping off into the vanishing horizon, returning from some strange cosmic journey, or whistling along from the comfort of your homestead, A Real Sensation leaves no question if the boot fits.”
“An album where each tune offers new surprises, ‘Green Lake’ points towards the early days of proto-punk, where ebbs of soft beauty align with raw drumming and soulful saxophone from Adrienne Kerr, while ‘La La’ is brief display of avant-garde pop that’s as playful as it is experimental and even brings in a flute from Pyle. ‘Sensation’, one of the album’s best, then moves swiftly with a garage rock spirit as the scrappy music suits the harmonic singing splendidly.
... An aptly titled first album, Pyle and company make a hefty impression here, with their kind of quirky and very nostalgic brand of song craft that’s as likely to bring to mind The Velvet Underground just as it is Bratmobile, and I don’t think anyone is going to have a problem with that."
"If The Velvet Underground or Stereolab were based in Seattle, they might sound something like Sundae Crush, especially on the songs ‘Lick It Up,’ ‘Long Way Back,’ ‘Sensation’ and ‘Good Boy.’ Album closer ‘Dudes Being Guys’ is a classic."
OX FAN-ZINE
PRINT, DEC. 2020
By Gereon Helme
"The squeaky-colored album cover with pastel-colored surfaces and naive sun-moon-and-star drawings promises nothing less than brightly colored, lively tweepop at first glance. Indie pop in the land of unicorns and "Hello Kitty" bags. Behind the album, however, there is more than sunshine and lollypop, because the activist quartet from Portland is equipped with sufficient political awareness, supports BLM, hates Trump, does not like guns and 50% of the album's proceeds go to WA Therapy Fund donated. All of this is very praiseworthy and when such a happy pop production between early PASTELS, VASELINES and the spirit of K-Records comes around, the cuteness bonus is well invested."
"Sundae Crush is the antidote to the feelbad reality-noir factor. A surreal personal galaxy of cotton-candy and cuckoo clocks, samba and sunshine, old 45rpms and Romance-in-Pictures comic-books. But although it lunges through the dimensional loop into full-spectrum space, this is a daydream band that writes ironic Disney Princess songs designed to crush modern ideas of romance through the autowrecker, so they come out either shiny-new, or toxic and unhealthy. The sassy tongue-in-cheek ‘Dudes Being Guys’ snipes at the whole masculinity pose, while ‘Sensation’ riffs in stereo from ear to ear attacking ‘I’m not your personal projection… I am a real sensation’ with a taunting na-na-na-nee-na-na thrown in for good measure."
"Recently relocated to Seattle from Denton, Texas, Sundae Crush has delivered a LP that could easily have been called Hushed. It’s a gentle, quiet, soothing record—the kind of cozy bedroom pop you play underneath the blankets while it rains outside your window, or while you’re picnicking in your backyard on a sunny day. But there’s something a little weirder and fuzzier around the edges of Crushed than there is in its mid-2000s twee forebears. Under its bright and shiny exterior is a lot of sadness and anxiety—truly reflecting the dual meanings of its title. Take “Chat Room Messages,” which begins with the whispered, pared-down whimsy of a lovestruck Belle and Sebastian song before revealing itself as a story about total disappointment. “Hey you don’t know/I read, your chatroom messages,” the song goes, “Okay well never mind/I’m not going to stick around and waste my time.” Over warbling chords and aimless, cheery guitar plucks, “Ice Cream Run” sounds at first like a cutesy, if slightly off-kilter, ode to a chilled-out summer. “The sun is out and the sky is turning pink/I got some In-N-Out and I don’t know what to think.” Suddenly the song turns into a repeated mantra of self-doubt: “I know that it’s true/He doesn’t like you/He doesn’t like you.” That slight, easy-to-miss tinge of darkness and despair turns Sundae Crush’s pleasant, dreamy songcraft into something a lot more intriguing and complex than that of their sonic peers."
Sundae Crush sound exactly like what their name implies: the feelings of eating ice cream sundaes and the unrequited love of having a crush. That’s not an easy balance to strike, at least not with the level of tenderness and affection that Sundae Crush infuses into their music. The Seattle via Denton, Texas dream-pop act weave chat room laments with irl sadness, resulting in a vibrant sound that’s just as easy to dance to as it is to wallow in your own feelings.
More daydream pop than dream pop, the songs have a light and gauzy vibe that never fully transcends reality, the whole thing remaining personal and grounded despite the escapist tendencies.
Tracks like ‘Chat Room Messages’ and ‘Ice Cream Run’ are anthems for bedroom kids of our generation, finding solace not in vast soundscapes or grand adventure, but rather TV and the internet. Which isn’t to say the whole thing isn’t beautiful―the half-paced, blissed-out ‘Swept’ is like lying in the bathtub and imagining you’re bobbing down some lukewarm river, and the pastel-coloured heart-ache of ‘Dating Game 3000’ and ‘Contestant’ provide some much needed comfort for your worried mind.