A good friend of mine, who also loves music but dabbles more in the alternative and hip hop side of music, recommended the first track of this record to me a while back. Since then, I've given myself the joy of repeatedly delving into this gold mine of alternative rock, full of creativity and personality that makes it stand out amongst the past decade of alternative and experimental rock.
classic j dies and goes to hell part 1 was the song that showed me the wonders of glass beach, and to this day still has my heart. It encompasses a lot of glass beach's sound while being one of the most anthemic tracks on the record. Its chorus is just pure heaven to me, and I don't feel like I can or want to dissect this song.
There's an amazing variety of soundscapes throughout this record. Developing from the basic rock instruments, glass beach branches out into many different textures and effects, including trumpets, vocoders, distortions, theremins, synths and also straight up ambient interludes. I love that they didn't limit themselves to the extent of their instruments, and with that managed to innovate and design such new and wonderful soundscapes.
Their influences are plenty and evident throughout the record. Stemming from a general emo sentiment, the sound also comes through occasionally in more anthemic and emotive tracks like cold weather and glass beach, but there's also a prominent influence from math rock and EDM in many of the tracks. As a band, it seems they've been adamant on being genre-fluid and avoiding definitive bounds, and ultimately have been successful too.
The record is all over the place, seemingly capturing many facets of the band's life experiences into one combined effort. It may be a bit jarring to get into at first, and it definitely has barriers for those not used to experimental rock or ambient work. After gaining familiarity with the album though, it is undoubtedly a genuine, passionate piece of work that is full of talent and quality just about every step of the way.
the first glass beach album is an amazing debut record and possibly has one of the strongest first impressions I've ever seen. After basking in the quality of this record, I really cannot help but be excited and in eager anticipation for what may come next from them. This is one of the best alt rock records I've ever come across, and I have a feeling I will come back to it many, many times in the next few decades.
Rating: 9/10