glass beach’s plastic death Album Review: Powerhouse Emo

glass beach have been residing the dream. It was January 2020 and their debut album, cheekily titled the primary glass seaside album, had simply acquired the reissue therapy from Run for Cowl Information mere months after its preliminary Bandcamp launch. Potential followers now not needed to comply with the appropriate accounts on Twitter with the intention to stumble throughout their music. glass seaside went on their first correct tour. Then, you already know what occurred subsequent.

But when any burgeoning band may’ve outlasted the thick of the pandemic, it’s glass seaside. The group’s preliminary trio of vocalist J McClendon, bassist Jonas Newhouse, and drummer William White got here collectively on-line, after Newhouse and White found McClendon’s solo music on their school radio station; staying related just about was of their very nature. Due to platforms like Zoom, Twitch, Discord, and even Minecraft, the band have been capable of foster their relationships with their listeners in addition to one another, exchanging demos that may ultimately evolve into their thrilling sophomore album, plastic death.

With guitarist Layne Smith within the fold, the album formally started to take form in late 2021 after all of the members moved into the identical home collectively. By way of persistent practising and infinite jam classes, it was right here that the majority of plastic demise was recorded, an album that feels way more huge than the sum of its components.

Take opener “coelacanth,” which begins with a mild, ominous piano arpeggio that ultimately morphs right into a double-time guitar riff. “Kids have been singing/ Animals bleating/ Markets and city sq./ In dissonant fanfare,” McClendon sings, evoking the grandiosity of a rock opera. It’s the kind of imagery that would come off as self-important, however glass seaside have the chops and self-awareness to again it up.

That introspection is felt into the general environment of plastic demise, too, which sees the playful maximalism of the primary glass seaside album evolve in the direction of one thing a bit extra summary, darker, and proggier. Like Weyes Blood’s 2022 opus And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, plastic demise hopes to tear off your rose-colored glasses, gorgeously using McClendon’s allegorical references to literature and the deep sea. Whereas the primary glass seaside album was extra closely involved with how one’s particular person id matches in to the modern world, plastic demise explores how the world itself shapes these identities.

Within the time that plastic demise started taking form, McClendon was analyzing their favourite experimental music right down to its most elementary parts. And whereas the album does hinge on a number of the identical mathy pop parts that originally put glass seaside beneath the “fifth-wave emo” umbrella, McClendon’s sharp, analytical ear elevates plastic demise past the standard fare. “whalefall” locations marimba chords over a skittering beat indebted to Aphex Twin, the riffs of “coelcanth” transfer in a 12/8 sway, “the CIA” culminates right into a grating industrial breakdown, and “slip beneath the door” sounds prefer it samples the gurgle of a house aquarium. plastic demise is a uncommon case of an album that feels without delay meticulously crafted and shockingly imaginative.