Review Summary: The indie rock record you've been looking for is here
Out of the many cities in the United States that have served as incubators for musical talent, one that stands out as having a disproportionate hit-rate relative to its population is Athens, Georgia. While relatively humble in its outward appearance (as opposed to the bright lights and titanic shadow of Atlanta), quite a few noteworthy bands have emerged from the wooded hills and college-town streets surrounding the University of Georgia campus. These include R.E.M., The B-52s, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Olivia Tremor Control, among many others. While albums such as Murmur and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea are rightly heralded as important rock records, I feel that The Glands’ self-titled sophomore record from 2000 is criminally underrated and deserves a place in the canon of underground rock classics.
Active during the late ‘90s and early 2000’s, The Glands centered around the musical leadership of the late Ross Shapiro. Despite its stylistically chameleonic nature (think if LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy had absorbed Southern rock and Big Star instead of disco and The Fall), Shapiro’s knack for sharp songcraft is on full display throughout this record. Despite the record’s formidable 19-song tracklisting, the record goes by quickly due to Shapiro’s economical approach to songwriting. The Glands manages to be both eclectic (having smoothed out the kinks of their promising yet scattershot debut in Double Thriller) yet easily accessible to the uninitiated, and it leads off with their best and most essential song.
“Livin’ Was Easy” is the perfect indie rock song – between its tight double-tracked vocals, casual-sounding yet purposeful power chords, and its sticky hooks, it progresses from an unassuming slacker jam to a bleary anthem-of-sorts in three minutes and change. If there’s any song that I’d recommend an immediate listen to from this album, it’s this one. The album keeps going with one hit after the other, ebbing and flowing from the caffeinated cadence of “Swim” and the straightforward power-pop blast of “Straight Down” to more woozy and downbeat tracks like “Mayflower” and “Ground”. Beyond the opener, it’s hard to single out any songs for criticism due to the album’s quality.
While this record doesn’t seek to reinvent the rock record by toying with structure or introducing any unexpected sonic detours, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more consistently excellent batch of rock songs presented one after the other. Given some time with the record, the case for The Glands as an unsung classic becomes clear and you’ll wonder why it wasn’t in your record collection in the first place.
