Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
And now for something completely different. Listening to Glassine is like listening to Elvis Costello with a really up tempo eighties beat made all their own. This is ironic because as the first song, "1978" indicates, they were not old enough to experience Costello's reign in the eighties. They are young, out of control, and dangerous with a keyboard. Fair warning, some of the songs like "EleKtromash" and "Plutonium Kid Part One" will rattle around in your head long after the album is over. Grade: Major Moss - Arcy Douglass, 5/01/2006 - Moss Magazine
The track 1978 starts off this album in an aptly named direction, in more ways than one, because Glassine owes a great deal to the punk movement which dominated the late 70s rock scene. If Elvis Costello had teamed up with The Ramones and The Cars, then we'd probably get something similar to this.
Glassine pouts and preens with punk attitude and New Wave plasticity, reviving the glory days when it all revolved around a great guitar hook and lots of image. They've obviously done their homework, skillfully executing the sound as if it were all new again. And in a way, it is. - 03/01/2006 - Mish Mash
"It's as if a strong wind started blowing in the late '70s, picked up the poppiest bits of the Ramones, some New Wave dust and a few flakes of post-punk ash...thus the latest release, Neat Spirits, a bloody chunk of major-label bait." - Micheal Byrne - Willamette Week, 11/23/ 2005 - Willamette Week
These Portland-based rockers show plenty of potential. Plutonium Kid starts off with a bang -- an oh-so-tasty Buzzcocks-style drum riff that coils everything up, building up to a high-powered melodic explosion and a super sing-along chorus. It's a catchy, happy throwback to the '80s, with just enough keyboard action in the melody to make it danceable. The lyrics are lighthearted and cute, and the obligatory guitar solo gets the job done but doesn't stick around for cigars and brandy.
""1978" is a heartfelt ode that all of us born in that decade can relate to. As vocalist Reggie says, "I was born in 1978 / I came just a little too late / To ever be a part of anything / Nothing going on." It's a chip that many music fans of a similar vintage have on their shoulders, and "1978" captures it perfectly. It also has a great beat, as fast and catchy as the Briefs' base work.
If Glassine can duplicate Plutonium Kid's success on a full-length, they'll be fending off creepy major label talent scouts before they know it. - Lindsay Casey, 11/27/2004 - Splendid
Discography
Neat Spirits - full length, self release - Nov 2005
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Glassine has been playing regularly around the Portland area for the last couple of years at clubs such as Berbati’s, Ash Street Saloon, Kelly’s Olympian, Loveland, Towne Lounge, etc. The band has played with such other local acts as: the Standard, Dolorean, Pinehurts Kids, Climber, Stars of Track and Field, & Loch Lomond. Glassine’s self-released full-length record, Neat Spirits, was recorded and mixed by Rob Oberdorfer (the Standard, Loch Lomond) at Friendly Ghost and mastered by Tony Lash (Heatmiser, Elliot Smith, Sunset Valley) at Super Digital.
With swiftness and assurance, Glassine’s craftsmanship conjures the details and sequences of daily life, with their circumstances and encounters, combining layers of expansive keyboards, swelling guitar melodies with sweaty rhythm and soul. These elements provide the framework for the expressive and truthful lyrics that put a voice to the human condition, which causes the listener to inadvertently tap a toe, sway a bit, shimmy a shoulder, and be taken to a better place, to the anthemed dimension of bronze, a space not defined by boundaries, only associations and connections that tickle the senses and explore the dreamy depth of time. It is this that makes Glassine’s collection of songs, one by one, indispensable. Glassine evokes at once the minutiae and the vastness of individual existence, the inconsolable sorrow of history and the scintillating beauty of the moment.
Links
