Album Review

The Glass – Teenage Galaxies

• 11th Aug 2010

Glass is a threesome of very sweet, fuzzy pop musical maestros from Manchester and have a spacey debut sending signals of all the bliss given from an autumnal deciduous forest. Warm and charming like an evening with claret and home-made log fires the record burns with sophistication. The whole of the 8 track album is greater than the sum of its parts and is in fact rather more like an autumn breeze blowing through the bristly trees the occasional leaping of fallen leaves into the sky.

Whenever they mix the wizard like acoustic and electric guitar trickery from Paul Baird with the solid foundations laid by Martin Cowan (bass) and Chris Norwood (drums) they shine with a glow of stars from up high. However, like the sun, this shining never really seems to stop even it does go dark at times.

Like all the greatest journeys though, there is a slow pace to get the everything underway and this is true of opener ‘Candle’, a delicate acoustic traverse into how light will change “A Darkened Room”. ‘Angels in the Snow’ goes through the soul unaware of its fractured nature with panic stricken guitars and drops with only the beat of the drum to keep the charging rhythmic darkness in a stranglehold tighter than murderous fury. This track is grittier than the rain soaked streets and grey slate roofs. Reflective in its nature the oo-oohs give the anthem ‘After The Rain’ its choral hook and makes the perfect accompaniment to the rolling, throbbing noises through with a vigour of dead leaves being chucked up in the air. Darkly delivered are the lyrics suddenly becoming clear like those mornings in which you greet Jack Frost and is very much that post festival come down song “Cupid shoot your arrow don’t be seen/After the rain I will come clean” there zest is there with no let up.