Lead Single You and Me on the Astral Plane is out now
Some artists say they’re done. Mark Crozer actually meant it — until he didn’t. The guitarist, who’s been a cornerstone of The Jesus and Mary Chain for nearly two decades, had firmly decided last summer that he was retiring from releasing music. Then nostalgia crept in, as it always does.
A bout of childhood reminiscing about growing up in Oxford, England led Crozer to write Everything Must Change, a dark wave confessional that cracked open the floodgates. One song became ten, and now we’ve got ‘Homecoming’ — out April 24th on boutique indie label Dusty Mars Records.
The album is a lushly layered rainy-day record — loops, samples, effects-drenched guitars, tribal beats, and Crozer’s spectral yet somehow soothing vocals all weaved together into a 10-track meditation on loss, grief, and endings. Think candor with a sharp British wit on the side.
The lead single, You and Me on the Astral Plane, is exactly the kind of goth-pop gem you’d want kicking things off. It’s a dark-wave love letter voiced by a ghost speaking to their still-living partner — equal parts eerie and tender, with more than a little wry humor tucked in. Crozer draws on the same textural, detached cool he’s refined alongside The Jesus and Mary Chain, landing somewhere in the neighborhood of The Cure‘s The Head on the Door-era romanticism. The macabre never sounded so warm.
“I know that you still hate me / Pretty much all of the time / For leaving you stranded / Alone and abandoned / Believe me honey so do I.”
Yeah, that’s a dead person apologizing for dying. And somehow it slaps.
Crozer himself puts it plainly: “I feel that it’s taken me until very late in my ‘career’ as a songwriter to reach a place where I’m genuinely happy with what I’ve produced — hence the title Homecoming. This bunch of songs feels like it belongs together, and I’m happy with all of them. I don’t normally feel that way. At best, I usually feel ambivalent.”
Relatable, honestly.
🎧 Stream You and Me on the Astral Plane on Spotify
‘Homecoming’ drops April 24th via Dusty Mars Records. Keep your eyes on this one.
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