NEW MUSIC // [GLAZIER] HAVE NO FEAR WITH DEBUT LP PHOBIAS

It’s not everyday you have the pleasure of talking about a band that you share not one but two old bandmates with, but with Eugene’s [glazier], we get just that. Eons ago, we played with the band’s singer / bassist Derek Sibert in Childspeak and guitarist Andrew Srack in Muscle Beach Petting Zoo. But don’t worry – you don’t have to know anything about the distant past to appreciate the band’s debut.

In fact, maybe it’s better you don’t – [glazier]’s distinct ratio of math rock, prog, and space jazz meets singer-songwriter material doesn’t really need to be compared to anything around it. That would just make things more difficult.

Additionally, as much as any of the tags or genres mentioned above, Phobias actually brings in a lot of 90’s influence as well, from bits of Rage Against the Machine and Incubus to Pavement and Harvey Danger.

There’s also an almost vintage affectation to the production that brings it all together, with old-school sounding drum and vocal reverbs and clean-but-dirty guitars to match on songs like “Tone Deaf Lullaby” and “Please Hold the Phobias.” In fact, “Please Hold The Phobias” almost takes us to Angles-era The Strokes in general with it’s gritty but pretty garage rock vibes, and they’re dialed in courtesy of a third old bandmate, Jeff Wiseman of ZnB Records aka Thom Simon, with an extra sheen applied from Edwin Paroissien and Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering.

That being said, things do get pretty modern in the middle though with tracks like “Dig Through Time,” a far moodier cut than anything that comes before it that starts to lean into frosty, static-covered post-rock. “They.I” drives things hard with metallic guitars and crunchy sweet compound meters courtesy of drummer Grayson Z. Andrews, and “Bets Are Made,” potentially the most math rock of the bunch, almost breaches into Muse territory on the melodic side with it’s nifty arpeggios and funky chords. There’s also an epic guitar effects moment called “Outer Wilds,” which you know is a shoutout to one of the greatest video games of the 21st century. You know what’s funny is we still get Andrew’s Xbox achievements on our home screen, and we could see that he’s been racking up the achievements – now we know why, space boy.

By the time epic prog closer “Hire and Yon” rolls around, you might have forgot what you were listening to, as it has a different, heavier tone in general to the entire record preceding it, but in our opinion, that’s what a good outro does – not to mention a great record.

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