A Cricket In Times Square formed in 2000 at University of Maryland’s student radio station WMUC. The fledgling band played a number of shows in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area, perhaps most memorably at the Black Cat's Velvet Underground tribute night. The epic versions of "Sister Ray" and "Heroin" they performed having incurred the wrath of the best club in town and many of their fellow performers (and finding little in common with the District's Dischord-centric music scene), the band felt it had little left to accomplish in D.C. After completing the recordings that would become this release, ACITS relocated to Seattle in late 2003. The band's self-titled debut was released on November 2, 2004.

MAGNET {Matthew Fritch, Jan/Feb 2005}
This Seattle band—named after a children's book(if you can get over Death Cab for Cutie, you can surely give Cricket a break)—leaves no guitar-effects pedal untouched on its debut. Coupled with smothered-in-the-fog vocals, Cricket could easily fall in with the shoegaze ranks; the dizzy-with-distortion quartet is substantially weirder, however, recalling a more pastoral Spacemen 3 or an even sloppier Galaxie 500.

PitchforkMedia {Chris Dahlen, Dec 12, 2004}
"Other effects-heavy guitar bands may be more psychedelic, outro or spastic, but by taking a straighter approach to their wall of sound they play to their strength: the gigantic melodies. The band's pedal fetish doesn't get in the way of songwriting, and each wash of noise yields a memorable tune."