Chuck Criss obit

Freelance Whales’ Chuck Criss Dead At 36

 

 He was not on the list.

Chuck Criss, a musician best known as a member of the indie band Freelance Whales and Computer Games, has died. Chuck’s brother and Computer Games bandmate, the actor and singer Darren Criss, confirmed the news of Chuck’s death in a long, heartfelt message on Instagram. According to Darren, Chuck died by suicide. He was 36.

“It breaks my heart beyond measure to say that my beloved brother Charles has left us,” Darren writes. “Obviously this is a colossal shock. His loss leaves behind a debilitating fracture in the lives of his mother, his brother, his three small children, and their respective mothers. I have spent what already feels like a small eternity trying to wrap my head around it, something I suspect I’ll be attempting to do for the rest of my life.” Darren requests that people read his full tribute to Chuck.

Chuck Criss was born in 1985 in San Francisco. He grew up mostly in San Francisco but spent four years in Hawai’i while his father worked as chairman and CEO of EastWest Bank. While living in New York in 2008, he formed Freelance Whales with Judah Dadone, Jacob Hyman, and Kevin Read, gaining traction in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn music scene while also performing on subway platforms. The band’s mix of baroque indie folk and electronic pop earned them accolades from a range of music blogs including this one; we named them a Band To Watch in 2009. At the time, Amrit Singh sung their praises like so:

    There’s palpable warmth and tactful touch that crackles throughout their strongest tunes’ group chants, harmonies, occasional computer beats and baroque-pop arrangements that should prove irresistible to people with soft spots for the likes of Sufjan, Ra Ra Riot, Postal Service, and on. Freelance Whales don’t sound like any of those artists outright, but they’re linked in their strength at expressing fragility, and at working out a sentimental but memorable melody.

Freelance Whales wound down after two albums, 2009’s Weathervanes and 2012’s Diluvia. In 2017, Chuck and Darren Criss released the Lost Boys Life EP as Computer Games.