On their new EP No Fun, Crooks & Nannies make music for people who like seeds in their watermelon and orange juice with plenty of pulp. It’s Madel Rafter and Sam Huntington’s first release in seven years (since their 2016 LP Ugly Laugh), and the West Philly duo make their comeback with six fresh-squeezed, emo-tinged songs with gobs of texture and twang, all about transformation and interpersonal connection, with all the beauty and messiness that comes with it.
When Rafter sings about intrusive thoughts on the crunching, careening “control,” you can feel the fine line between composure and chaos in every blown-out beat of the drums. Then there’s “Sorry,” which Huntington wrote in one sitting in the midst of coming out as trans; the version that appears on the EP builds on vocals from her original demo, captured in a moment of deep vulnerability. The two know their way around a hook and a quiet-loud dynamic, and as singers, they’re not afraid to wring the raw emotional juice out of a breath until their voices shake.
In addition to those songs and the title track, No Fun includes three cassette-exclusive songs that showcase the duo at their most exploratory; “Liquor Store,” for one, with its synths and wind chimes, and “3am,” which descends from guitars and double vocals into a scramble of skronky horns and dance-punk drums. You can stream the non-cassette-exclusive tracks below, and read through a track-by-track commentary by Rafter and Huntington, who were kind enough to take us through all the nooks and crannies of the latest Crooks & Nannies.
1. “Liquor Store”
Madel Rafter: When I was 21 I was at the liquor store with a person I was dating, when they got a gnarly nosebleed. The security guard wouldn’t let them leave until they showed their ID, I guess to make sure we weren't pulling some kind of elaborate on-command nosebleed scheme in order to drink underage. I thought it was really silly, so I wrote a song about it.
2. “control”
Madel Rafter: I wrote “control” in 2017 while struggling with consistent intrusive thoughts. I wanted to capture the feeling of walking through an art museum and holding all of your muscles tightly because if you don’t, you might give into some crazy impulse and do something really, really bad, like pull a painting off the wall and put your foot through it. The lyrics talk about wearing a mask for the world to conceal internal negative thoughts, and worrying about being “bad to the bone” and ugly inside. On the façade, the song feels humorous, but I often use humor as a way to soften the blow of darker sentiments. Sonically, we took an approach that feels almost sing-songy at the top, but gets progressively more chaotic, fast, and emotionally blown out as the song progresses.
3. “Sorry”
Sam Huntington: “Sorry” is the first and only song I’ve written entirely in one sitting. I recorded a demo immediately afterward, and the final vocal is still the take from that demo. It came to me in 2018, at an incredibly overwhelming and unstable time in my life—I had recently made the decision to stop ignoring the fact that I was transgender, but was struggling to grapple with what that meant for me personally, and was feeling a lot of frustration toward myself for not having figured it out. Simultaneously, I found myself single for the first time in years and without the self-understanding to forge structures and supports I had, until that point, found in other people. I was in over my head, looking for strength in the wrong places, and having an increasingly difficult time seeing a future for myself.
4. “Cantaloupe”
Madel Rafter: Every day I thank god for autocorrect, because I can’t possibly remember how to spell the title of this song. “Cantelöpe” has been arranged and recorded in a number of different ways. It started with only acoustic guitar and vocals, and despite our best efforts to add other instrumentation, this song always feels best with a lonelier arrangement. It’s about longing. Wanting to feel softer and kinder. To break down walls, to accept love and affection others are trying to give. This is the last song I recorded before my voice changed from HRT. It’s funny and special to listen to a past, sadder me, who feels like a different person in many ways.
5. “3am”
Sam Huntington: I wrote “3am" a couple years back, shortly after our previous single “Sorry,” and they deal with similar themes. In both, I hear myself struggling to stay afloat—grasping frantically for confidence in the face of what felt, at the time, like an impossibly hostile world. In “3am,” however, I hear a shift away from isolation and toward community.
As I pulled myself out of desperation and reconnected with friends, I began to see my own value reflected back at me through those relationships. The anger and frustration I had been directing inward was beginning to shift toward a more deserving—if incredibly vague—target: the world in general, with all of its cruelties and injustices. I had not yet learned to care for myself, but had found a buoy in my care for others and felt fiercely determined to protect them.
Madel is one of the first people I came out to, and hearing their voice on “3am" makes so much sense to me. I wrote all the lyrics, but the song has a conversational quality and we wanted to lean into that by trading lines. As far as sound, we went for a mixture of punk and disco, hoping to simultaneously emphasize the visceral frustration, as well as the warmth and communal focus of the lyrics. The cherry on top was a raucous horn duel in the bridge, between Madel on sax, and their dad, John, on trumpet.
6. “No Fun”
Madel Rafter: There was a man I saw a few years ago at an arcade in Philadelphia, sitting with an unwavering gaze on a Jurassic Park pinball machine. He had a big plastic cup half full with quarters on a stool next to him. He was set up before I got to the arcade and still staring at the game when I left. When I wrote “No Fun,” I was feeling really checked out of the world. It’s about feeling insular and lonely, rejecting other people's attempts at connection but not being quite sure why.
