Crimson
Alkaline Trio
Crimson is the fifth studio album by Chicago punk rock band Alkaline Trio, released on May 24, 2005 through Vagrant Records. Recorded at Conway Studios in Los Angeles between November 2004 and January 2005, the album was produced and mixed by Jerry Finn — the acclaimed pop-punk producer whose credits include Blink-182, AFI, and Green Day — who visited the band in Chicago during pre-production to listen to and shape the songs before the formal sessions began. It would prove to be Finn's final collaboration with the band before his death in 2008. The album expands on the Trio's sound with more prominent overdubs and additional instrumentation than their previous records, including piano and keyboards from Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and string arrangements from Warren Fitzgerald, giving the record what Matt Skiba described as a cinematic, "film noir" aesthetic. Debuting at number 25 on the Billboard 200 — the band's highest chart position at the time — it went on to sell over 200,000 copies in the US and earn a Silver certification in the UK.
Across its 13 tracks, Crimson moves through the band's familiar terrain of broken relationships, self-destruction, and mordant dark humor while pushing into more explicitly narrative and literary territory. "Sadie" — written about Susan Atkins of the Manson Family and incorporating a spoken-word excerpt from her testimony — was identified by Skiba as having set the album's overall tone, and its unsettling character anchors the record's more ambitious half. "Prevent This Tragedy" references the wrongful convictions of the West Memphis Three, while lead single "Time to Waste" provides the album's most anthemic and radio-ready moment, with a music video directed by Linkin Park's Joe Hahn. Further singles "Mercy Me" and "Burn" — the latter receiving a remix from Tim Armstrong of Rancid — round out the promotional campaign. Critical reception was generally favourable, with Drowned in Sound calling it the band's "most well-rounded LP so far" and Stylus awarding a B+, though some longer-standing fans and outlets felt the album's polish and commercial orientation came at the cost of the rawer urgency of their earlier work.
Crimson
Alkaline Trio
Crimson is the fifth studio album by Chicago punk rock band Alkaline Trio, released on May 24, 2005 through Vagrant Records. Recorded at Conway Studios in Los Angeles between November 2004 and January 2005, the album was produced and mixed by Jerry Finn — the acclaimed pop-punk producer whose credits include Blink-182, AFI, and Green Day — who visited the band in Chicago during pre-production to listen to and shape the songs before the formal sessions began. It would prove to be Finn's final collaboration with the band before his death in 2008. The album expands on the Trio's sound with more prominent overdubs and additional instrumentation than their previous records, including piano and keyboards from Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and string arrangements from Warren Fitzgerald, giving the record what Matt Skiba described as a cinematic, "film noir" aesthetic. Debuting at number 25 on the Billboard 200 — the band's highest chart position at the time — it went on to sell over 200,000 copies in the US and earn a Silver certification in the UK.
Across its 13 tracks, Crimson moves through the band's familiar terrain of broken relationships, self-destruction, and mordant dark humor while pushing into more explicitly narrative and literary territory. "Sadie" — written about Susan Atkins of the Manson Family and incorporating a spoken-word excerpt from her testimony — was identified by Skiba as having set the album's overall tone, and its unsettling character anchors the record's more ambitious half. "Prevent This Tragedy" references the wrongful convictions of the West Memphis Three, while lead single "Time to Waste" provides the album's most anthemic and radio-ready moment, with a music video directed by Linkin Park's Joe Hahn. Further singles "Mercy Me" and "Burn" — the latter receiving a remix from Tim Armstrong of Rancid — round out the promotional campaign. Critical reception was generally favourable, with Drowned in Sound calling it the band's "most well-rounded LP so far" and Stylus awarding a B+, though some longer-standing fans and outlets felt the album's polish and commercial orientation came at the cost of the rawer urgency of their earlier work.