Crocodiles singer Brandon Welchez sits down with Tapedek to discuss his criminal record, why he despises Pitchfork and why his band’s third album is “the best one yet.”

Tapedek: Before this year, Crocodiles were largely anonymous here in Canada, which is strange because you’ve been around for a number of years. The Pitchfork coverage on you guys goes as far back as 2008…

BW: [laughs] Negative Pitchfork coverage…. [laughs]

That must have been weird. What was that like?

BW: What? Being negatively reviewed?

Yeah.

BW: Yeah, in a way, that was cool. I don’t care, I mean I’ve never given a shit about them anyway, you know, so, yeah it’s not a big deal. It means a lot more to us when a kid comes up to us after a show and says, “Your record means something to me,” than what some idiot at Pitchfork thinks.

Do you feel that distain for other critics as well?

BW: This is always touchy to talk about with journalists, but you can sort of tell a level of bitchiness with certain critics and certain journalists who have an agenda. You can just tell, some of them, they just really hate music. They hate music because they want to be musicians but they don’t have musical talent, or they do have musical talent and they tried, and they failed, and they’re really resentful. And then there’s really good music critics out there. It’s all relative, everyone’s an individual.

What was it like transitioning from your old band [mid-2000s post-hardcore outfit The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower] to this one?

BW: Our old band broke up at the very end of 2006 and this band played its first show in May 2008, so it was quite a while between [projects]. That band was obviously very abrasive and discordant. While that band was going I had started a side project that was an exercise in how to write pop music. It was more influenced by Buzzcocks, it was just my first attempts at trying to write songs with melodies and trying to understand how a hook works. So that was my learning process, not that I know what I’m doing now.

A lot of bands who rose to fame in the recent noise-pop movement are releasing second LPs now that sound much more polished. Bands like Girls, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, even the Dum Dum Girls new album, it all sounds much glossier. Why do you think that trend is happening?

BW: Number one, I don’t think there were any more noisy or lo-fi bands two or three years ago, whenever the wave happened, than there were at any other time. Bloggers and journalists decide what is going to be a trend and what’s going to be a big scene. Obviously, bands have something to do with it. But in the age of the internet, it’s not localized scenes like in the 90s or the 80s, where there might be a big influential band in a city, and all the bands sound like that in that city, and it’s all very contained there.

With things like GarageBand, people were able to record themselves at home, and it’s much easier to make an interesting sounding “shitty recording” than it is to make something slick. So it would come across as more genuine to do that. And there just happened to be a few interesting bands as the same time, and so some journalists caught on and made it into something.

I think there was probably also a reaction going on to bands like Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend, who sound really, like, I’m not insulting these bands, but quite clean, quite safe. So I think that if you feel you don’t have any access to that world, which me and my bandmate didn’t, you start feeling like, who really gives a shit what your recording sounds like because no one’s going to listen to it. Let’s make something that sounds cool to us and our friends.

Most of those bands, like us, Dum Dum Girls, probably Girls, I don’t really know about them, did their first albums on a budget because they didn’t have labels. And the label contacted them after the fact. So there’s no recording budgets. Once money and things like that come into it you’re able to make something….

[At this point the noise from the guitar techs testing the microphones becomes too much for Welchez to bear. He suggests we go sit on the curb outside the tattoo parlour next to the venue.]

BW: I guess we can sit right here. Do you think these guys will get pissed?

Nah, I think they’re just laid-back tattoo guys. So do you think there’s an element of accessibility, and the search for bigger success, that plays a role a band in polishing up their sound?

BW: Maybe. I think a lot of band’s first recordings are shittier than they intended because they didn’t know what they were doing. There’s a realization too: if you intentionally make a shitty record even though you have the money to make something more decent, it’s going to come across as fake.

Most of these bands are intelligent people and they recognize like, if someone gave us 10 or 20 or 30 thousand dollars to record, and it sounds like we recorded on a boombox, and we’re on Matador or Fat Possum or Sub Pop, everyone’s gonna know that it’s inauthentic.

Have you ever seen The Clash documentary? Westway to the World? They’re taking about writing lyrics for their second album, and they’re talking about how they can’t really write about career opportunities anymore, because now they have a career. And they can’t really write about being on the dole, because they have money. To some degree, it’s the same thing. These bands have a support system now so its not going to be as DIY sounding as it once was.

Have you considered that sound debate for your next record?

BW: We’ve already recorded our third record. We did our first album by ourselves, and our second record we did with Arctic Monkeys producer, you know? It’s the same thing, we had money. I guess we could have pocketed some of that money.

This time, we recorded it ourselves, but we did it with in a proper studio with a proper engineer. And it sounds like a proper recording, it doesn’t sound like a home recording at all.

What does it sound like? How would you describe it?

BW: Umm….it’s…..our best work yet? I don’t know. [laughs]

Catchier? Dirtier?

BW: It’s poppier. I think the songwriting has improved in a pop sense. We’ve gotten better at twisting shit around. More surprising. I hope.

What took you guys so long to get to Canada, anyway?

Uhhhh….we have…uhh… criminal records, so it’s like, if it’s not impossible, it’s really expensive to get in. NXNE 2011 was the first time we were getting paid enough to make it worth our while to cross the border. We have to eat and pay our bills and stuff…