Review Summary: Finding comfort in discomfort
It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to
Down Through’s album cover perfectly represents the music contained within. It’s an apparent shimmer in a strangely appealing sea of darkness; it’s the one thinks one is able to see, yet falls victim to failing to acknowledge it. Gleemer’s latest record is equal parts clarity and confusion; it’s the discomfort of finding oneself staring at the smouldering remains of a bonfire in the early morning, yet cherishing the fact that these remains on the foreign lawn make more sense to you than the drunk, the stoned, the unconscious.
Down Through is an album about being self aware of one’s discomfort and potential loneliness, yet attempting to accept it as the better alternative.
It takes you so much higher / Just to sit back down
As a result, the album is much more contemplative than Gleemer’s previous output. In spite of being neither as cathartic as
Anymore nor as catchy as
Moving Away, it manages to be the band’s most rewarding listen: a record that keeps unfolding, one that is in for the long haul. Still bathing in reverb-drenched indie rock,
Down Through is produced to introspectively glistening excellence. Corey Coffman’s vocals are often half-intelligible, effectively highlighting
Down Through’s themes and allowing these rare moments of apparent clarity to carry the weight they should. “Casino” is a magnificent late-album highlight, functioning as the most immediate moment of lucidity on the record, the song’s final minute is a perfect shoegaze crescendo. The shiver-inducing finale presents Gleemer at their most vulnerable; allowing for the lurking light to be let in, even if the clarity does not yield the positive results one would hope for.
You’re alive, and that’s all
Yet, while “Casino” could have served as a perfect closing track, Gleemer chooses to return to the familiar shadows of uncertainty instead. Because, as clearly as
Down Through is able to see at times, it is not an album about chasing the light as much as it is about finding comfort in discomfort. In its attempts of making the most out of anxiety-inducing situations, the album’s main distinguishable motif appears to be nervosity, with the music often functioning as a meditative counterpart. The title track simply ending on Coffman proclaiming that he is alive is a brilliantly fitting conclusion to the record. After nine songs of contemplating the light, he appears to be at ease with all of it; imperfections, discomfort, the very nature of being human.
Down Through questions the uncertain, yet knows that this empty, meaningless space is all it will ever be, and, while the very point in existing may seem non-existent when one’s heart beats to nothing, it’s the apparent moments of clarity that make it worth it, whether unnerving or not.
