The Glands
MUSIC REVIEWS :: NEWS :: CRUD RADIO ::NEW RELEASES::PREVIEWS::HOME
 
SAMARITANS - CHANGE OUR MINDS
 
 
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
MEDIA STREAM PREVIEW
play with Windows Media
Play Crud Radio - 1 hour of great music mixed exclusively for Crud
CRUD MUSIC MAG  ALERTS

MUSIC POLLS
Most Convincing Northerner
John Simm
Liam Gallagher
Peter Kay
Max Beesley
Vernon Kay

View Weekly Poll Results

   

The Glands Interview

Out of Athens, Georgia, USA comes something jangly, something goofy, and something passionately oddball. Sound familiar? Well no, quite honestly. The Glands are about to simultaneously satisfy and dissapoint you.

19/11/01

Picture of the Glands

Contrary to what the press release states, The Glands are not a band that 'lacks direction'. Whilst it may be true that the band members 'have more personalities and mood swings than a menopausal Cybil', their self-titled debut for Capricorn Records is another indisputable, mis-chord shaped classic.

Formed in 1996, studio and sonic misfits, Ross Shapiro (vocals/guitar) and drummer Joe Row released their independent debut album, Double Thriller, in early 1997. With a modicum of critical success, however, the album was snatched up and re-released by Bar None Records in 1998.

Part Guided By Voices, part Big Star, part Nick Cave, the album amply demonstrated that there was a dark, mis-shapen heart to Athens, Georgia. This disproportionate and hip college town has legend of two polarities: the tirelessly jangly (REM) and the marvellously goofy (as in the B52s). If ever a happy, discordant medium was needed to be struck, the Glands have sure as hell struck it, and struck it well.

Shapiro himself, likens the band's first album, 'Double Thriller' to a 'photo album of a particular place and time'. The place was, for the most part, a new studio across from the legendary 40 Watt Club. The time? The small hours before dawn, when itinerant musicians straggling from the 40 Watt might be looking for somewhere else to go. And it's out of this makeshift throng of stragglers that this unfathomable, but infectious sound emerged.

And since signing to Capricorn, nothing much seems to have altered.

Like the previous release, The Glands is a grab-bag of rainbow melodies and songs culled from various studio sessions; several of which were recorded with Andy Baker at Chase Park Transduction while others were finished at Elixir Studio with engineer Peter Fancher (whose credits include, Sugar) and at home on the band's own recording gear.

Says Shapiro. "At least half of it is more guitar-rock oriented. There's some slow dirges that are a little more atmospheric. There's a few that are low and slow. And there are some oddities, too. I think it will sound better than Double Thriller - that album was kind of a mish-mosh and parts of this are kind of a mish-mosh... I guess I can't really compare them."

And as Shaprio says, these songs are indeed quite difficult to place.

Close in spirit to the likes of Sparklehorse, Swell, and Grandaddy in their alternative country slacker mentality, and yet joyfully wound up in the early seventies curiosity shop of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, and Zappa, The Glands is a twangy, tortuous Wurlitzer ride of an album: lo-fi aesthetic meets wall of sound skill. With adept uplifting harmonies and tirelessly sing along choruses, the core of the album's charm is that it at once embraces and repels the raw, standard algorithms of plug in and play it rock n' roll: heart in the right place, and head in the clouds both. This is an album done by anything but numbers.

Cheerfully buoyant and offbeat throughout, the opening song, 'Livin' Was Easy' has the sights, the smells, and the taste's of a slacker's downtown apartment coupled with the idle magic slides of a bottleneck guitar and the mid-country buzz of a mouth-organ. It's mad, it's loopy, yes - but it has the studied mis-contexting of a major cult classic.

Take next, a little Ben Folds and ELO piano-psychedelia and you have the effervescent, 'Swim'. It's playful, it's idiosyncratic and really very, very, very enjoyable. That the record is also pleasantly schizoid is of course perfectly obvious. They don't come much more tender than, 'Fortress', nor as painfully wistful as standout track, 'Favourite Amercian' - evoking the very best out of Coyne's psychedelic medical trip, the Flaming Lips and the socio-eccentric commentaries of Young in equal measures.

I played the album once and was instantly won over. Pure driving music with the ageless knack of having all the solos in the right places, it's madness kept in check and it's eagerness to please offset by it's equal tendency to deliver.

Mad as cheese, yes, but in a good way, not too forced and not too 'zany'. The obscure Soft Bulletin of 2001 without a doubt. Please don't pass this band over just because you didn't catch them first on MTV.

see also:
Velocette Records

Alan Sargeant for Crud Magazine© 2001

 
 
 

 

© CRUD MUSIC MAGAZINE/
2-4-7-MUSIC.COM 2009

STILL refusing to dumb it down.

CRUD MUSIC MAGAZINE HOME :: NEW RELEASES :: MUSIC REVIEWS :: MYCRUDSPACE :: MEDIA STREAMS :: MUSIC NEWS :: ADVERTISING :: POLLS :: CONTACT US ::
***AVERTISEMENT***
Room4U.org.uk - Up to 75% OFF standard rates
***AVERTISEMENT***
Crud Magazine is set up and maintained in accordance with permissions and conditions agreed by all parties.