“Rocha starts Crayons with a Beatlesque gem in Sevens into Nines that is sure to warm the heart of power pop fans. British styled hooks are all over this album, with a psychedelic touch Peaches and Lemon Lime uses sitar & acoustic strums making it sound like a Gripweeds tune. It stays fairly trippy until the title track, which is full of strings & sweet chord shifts in a pastoral XTC style. The awesome guitar bombast of Sunshine Sue is closer to Matthew Sweet with its Revolver styled bass line. Then we get to Fairies in a Yorkshire Glen with demented sped-up laughter & its repeating melody. Similarly Amelia Earhart starts with a 12-string strum, & sardonic lyrics. One of the best songs here is Tomorrow Soon with its ascending bridge and looping chorus. The sorrow (?) of losing the names of Adolph, O.J. or Lee Harvey is beautifully described in Baby Adolph. A terrific pop album. Too many beautiful melodies to ignore, & it makes my top 10 list this year.”
- David Bash, powerpopaholic.com (Oct 19, 2012)
“Paul Rocha describes Crayons as "British Invasion by a left-handed American" and his take correctly pegs the album as a somewhat quirky, tongue-in-cheek evocation of Beatlesque pop. Rocha's pop is similar to artists like Roger Klug and XTC, and opening track Sevens into Nines gives you a good idea where he's coming from as it segues from sweet pop into a White Album-like guitar freakout into a bombastic pop song. Meanwhile, Peaches and Lemon Lime takes a slight psych turn (love that sitar) in its straight-ahead power pop, Medicine Ride is McCartneyesque chamber pop, and Don't Go in the Water Now and Fairies in a Yorkshire Glen have that Andy Partridge pastoral feel. Elsewhere, Rocha offers up his twisted yet melodic outlooks on Amelia Earhart, Peace Signs on the Wall, and why nobody names their babies Adolph (or OJ or Lee Harvey) any more. Another excellent pop disc in a year full of them.
- Steve Ferra, Absolute Powerpop (Oct 10, 2012)
“Just glancing at the band of Valley ringers on Paul Rocha's latest release (Matty Cullen, Brian Marchese, Sam Barnes and Danny Bernini), it's not hard to imagine how and why Crayons is such a vintage-sounding pop-rock gem. The hooks and melodies are top-notch, as are the instrumental parts, deftly arranged string parts, vocal harmonies and production, blending a George Martin Sgt. Pepper-era feel with some droning backwards tracks and latter-day voice effects. Rocha's songwriting is, generally speaking, solid power-pop, but also crams in tasty acid-folk and semitone sensibilities/sitar sounds that present a great exercise in incorporating more typically Eastern style into Western music. Rocha's lyrics stand out as the oddest jigger-pour in his creative cocktail, blending innocence and cynicism into anecdotes that are hard to peg either as true-life stories or pure psychedelic fiction.”
- Tom Sturm, The Valley Advocate (Sep 06, 2012)