…given the songs are pretty much snatches of sound padded out by sky high attitude, it’s hard to define exactly why you like them or why you’re frustrated they’re not 3 times as long… Maybe that’s the whole point.
…given the songs are pretty much snatches of sound padded out by sky high attitude, it’s hard to define exactly why you like them or why you’re frustrated they’re not 3 times as long… Maybe that’s the whole point.
http://www.soniccathedral.co.uk
I have mixed feelings about this record – at moments I’m completely entranced by it; at others it leaves me frustrated, hanging on and waiting for a passage to fulfil its potential. Despite my reservations there’s this underlying grittiness and determination (or maybe a stubbornness not to do anything anyone expects) that makes the record one I keep playing over and over.
It starts in a pretty standard manner; Stranger is a bittersweet strut, lots of warm, russet guitar sounds with the vocals adding a wistful sounding harmony line, then suddenly the track segues into a beautiful ethereal tail out that floats like some barrage balloon over sunlit uplands… (Some of the mini inter-track segments are just so beautiful you are caught mid-stride, rendered almost immobile by them). Then we get Can’t See, possibly the most conventional track on the record, a hazy melody that is seemingly happy telling a is jolted into life and given form by a brutal guitar riff. Again a beautiful segment made out of crystalline, glittering noise which morphs into Bye, a song which merely adds a beat and a counter melody courtesy of a rich, gloopy bass line to what we’ve already heard. This is very sensual stuff.
Although you could say that once or twice there’s a nod to MBV or Pluramon, (Making Up) the record plays very much by its own rules. At times it sounds almost heavenly (the riff on Babe) and at times portentous (the epic closing number, Dying), but given the songs are pretty much snatches of sound padded out by sky high attitude, it’s hard to define exactly why you like them or why you’re frustrated they’re not 3 times as long… Maybe that’s the whole point.
I think what you make of Glitter is utterly reliant as to what mood you’re in; maybe I just give in and enjoy it for what it can be; a beautiful record – maybe you just need to experience it as one long listen rather than search for songs in this translucent, glimmering wall of sound.