Heart of Glass

The first time Ethan Kath laid eyes on his future Crystal Castles partner Alice Glass was in a squat on the south side of Toronto. Barely five feet tall and with the physique of an under-nourished pixie, she was spewing beer and profanities in the face of the grizzled old punks who wanted to beat the crap out of her. He was smitten there and then.

“They were telling her to ‘fuck off’ and she was right in their faces calling them pussies,” he remembers. “She was 15-years-old. I couldn’t believe how incredibly brave she was. She had no concern, whatsoever, for the consequences. I knew then she had to be on my music.”
Kath, who will spend most of the interview complaining of a ‘blinding fucking headache’, is in the back of a tour bus making its way from Texas to Georgia. It’s been a fraught few weeks for Crystal Castles. Performing at the Latitude fest in Britain in July, the gothic bleep-core duo almost precipitated a riot when Glass planted a haymaker on a punter she believed had “touched her tits” in the mosh-pit.
How does Kath remember the incident, which the UK media seized upon as a matter of earth-shaking significance?
“Was there a lot of hysteria?” he shrugs. “I didn’t realise that. I don’t know... That’s too long ago. Too much has happened since then. To be honest, I don’t recall what really happened.”
Does he ever fear for Glass when she disappears into a writhing mosh-pit?
“She’s tough as nails,” he says, as if the question hadn’t previously occurred to him. “I’ve never met a tougher person actually. She comes from a noise punk background. When I saw her in that squat in Toronto, she was like a powerful force. And if you listened to the lyrics, she was so poetic.”
When they met, he was in a rock band about to sign to a major. His bandmates were psyched, but Kath found imminent fame and wealth a dispiriting prospect. Without fully explaining where he was going, he quit to form Crystal Castles with Glass.
“There were major labels flying in A&R guys to our shows. We were offered a record deal. It was at that point I realised I couldn’t commit myself to this sound. Essentially we were a Stooges tribute band. Initially we’d play covers. Then we’d write originals that sounded like the covers. To me, it was like we were paying tribute to the past. It was cool to do that in exchange for free beer. To sign a contract, which would mean we were paying tribute to the ‘70s for ten years, was too much. I said, ‘No thanks.’ I’d rather create something new, even if it wasn’t going to be popular.”
Glowering from beneath fearsome Rasputin eyebrows, his beard the colour of coagulated tar, Kath seems determined to live up to his reputation as a ‘difficult’ interviewee this morning. He has a disconcerting habit of offering one-word answers (usually ‘yeah?’ or ‘what...?’). Weirder yet, some of his quotes are almost word-for-word identical to those he has provided in previous interviews. It’s almost as if he’s learned chunks of conversation by rote and spews them out when you ask the relevant question. He is, as one industry person who’s worked with him commented, a “pretty strange dude”.
With characteristic disdain for the conventional way of doing things, Crystal Castles recorded their new album in a series of ever more unlikely locations around the globe, including a self-built log cabin in Ontario, and an abandoned convenience store in Michigan.
“It wasn’t about the places,” says Kath. “It was about being pure. When we finished touring, we both had left our apartments behind. We had nowhere to go. So we would finish the last tour of the show, find a studio and record some songs. We did this every few months. The geography element didn’t matter. I don’t think geography can ever influence a Crystal Castles song. No matter where we are in the world, we find a space and isolate ourselves.”
Strangely, the one subject about which Kath speaks freely is the death of his best friend and long-time musical collaborator Pino Placentile, to whom both Crystal Castles LPs are dedicated.
“We were in a band called Jakarta together. And then we stopped that and started an acoustic duo,” says Kath, sounding like an actual human being for the first time in our conversation. “We were going to record some songs in a studio. Before that, he died in his sleep of an aneurysm. He was my best friend. It was a huge loss. He was the sweetest person you could ever meet. It’s not fair he had to go.”
He seems haunted by the death.
“Of course. Especially when someone so sweet and loved by everyone dies. He could never a hurt a fly. He would collect Leonard Cohen vinyl. He was so gentle and unassuming.”
Was he drawn to Glass because in some way he’s attempting to make up for that loss?
“They are completely different. He was this non-violent guy who would just keep to himself. And there she was in that punk squat aged 15, spitting in people’s faces. It’s hard to imagine how two individuals could be less alike.”