Mark Crozer Photo credit: Mark Crozer
Mark Crozer has released countless solo and collaborative albums and has been a member of legendary alt-rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain for nearly 20 years. Yet last summer, he was adamant that he wasn’t going to release any more music. That mandate lasted until he started reminiscing about his childhood in Oxford, England and wrote the dark wave confessional, “Everything Must Change.”
That personal track inspired a full collection of songs. Homecoming, out April 24th on boutique indie label Dusty Mars, is a 10-song album that explores loss, grief, and endings with heartfelt candor and sharp British wit. A rainy-day record, it’s lushly layered with loops, samples, effects-laden guitars, tribal beats, and Crozer’s spectral yet soothing vocals.
The first single, “You and Me on the Astral Plane,” is a goth-pop meditation voiced by a ghost speaking to their still-living partner.
“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,” says the British-born, Brooklyn-based artist. “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.”
To date, Crozer has released eight solo albums, along with numerous singles, EPs, and collaborations, including two albums with North Carolina-based band The Rels. His song “Broken Out in Love” was used extensively by World Wrestling Entertainment under the title “Live in Fear,” and Crozer and The Rels performed it live at WWE’s WrestleMania XXX pay-per-view event. He has also worked with NYC-based rapper Consequence (A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West), played bass in Jim Reid’s solo band, and since 2007 has been a member of The Jesus and Mary Chain, first on rhythm guitar and then on bass.
Homecoming marks a departure from Crozer’s earlier work. Rather than writing traditional three-chord guitar songs, he assembled tracks in his bedroom studio, working more like a hip-hop artist or modern pop producer, building full songs from seedling vibes. Ideas evolved through experimentation and improvisation. “In most cases, I don’t think I could even tell you what key or chord progression I used,” Crozer laughs. “I was just frustrated with playing the same chords every time I picked up a guitar.”
Though Homecoming is darkly reflective, the music carries a new-wave, dark-wave, alt-rock sweetness. Many songs are built around major chords, airy atmospherics, and Crozer’s breathy vocals. “For me, if it’s pure gloom, it loses its weight,” he explains. “Having sweetness alongside sadness resonates more deeply.”
The album opens with the catchy post-punk track “Entertainment Is Dead,” inspired by the 1980s darts-based UK game show Bullseye, with lyrics lifted from the show’s catchphrases. The shadowy “The Days of Song Are Gone” channels Joy Division through its blend of tribal drumming, ethereal textures, and stark despondency. Here, Crozer sings:
And I’m left here with nothing but a memory
A rhyme without a reason or a melody
No hook to hang my hat on just an empty tree
Worn out clothes and shoes are all that’s left of me
The days of song are gone
Don’t follow me.
On “The Blight,” he turns his gaze toward collective pain and anxiety, delivering a unique composition with odd time signatures and a seething message of revolutionary hope:
Knives are coming tonight
To slice out the blight
Stay out of sight
Keep your lights low.
The creative spark behind the album was “Everything Must Change,” a Velvet Underground styled meditation on aging and loss. “It’s probably the most personal song I’ve written,” Crozer says. “A big part of change is losing people you love over the years—something I’m more aware of as I get older.” The title track, “Homecoming,” is a funky new-wave tune and something of a reinterpretation of a song Crozer originally co-wrote with singer-songwriter Molly McGrath. The shoegaze-tinged “Broken Windows” is written from the perspective of a ghost unaware of its own death, showcasing Crozer’s dry British humor in lines like:
There’s no comfort in the house anymore
Broken windows in every wall
I don’t feel that I must even be alive
I watch you blow right through.
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