Now a full band, Glitterer (Ned Russin of Title Fight) returns to Wilkes-Barre for free album release show on Nov. 20
From a press release:
Glitterer, the Washington, D.C., post-hardcore band with roots in Northeastern Pennsylvania, has a new record, its fourth full-length album. It’s called “erer,” and it’s on Purple Circle Records, a little label co-owned by singer/bassist Ned Russin, widely known for his previous band, Kingston punk/shoegaze group Title Fight.
Performed by a revamped lineup – drummer Robin Zeijlon and guitarist Colin Gorman came on board last year, joining Russin and keyboardist Nicole Dao – and recorded by prolific producer/engineer Arthur Rizk (Ghostmane, Code Orange, Power Trip), who has worked on every Glittererer release since 2019, “erer” is the most thematically urgent work the band has produced to date. These 10 tracks are also the most immediately and sustainedly ear-pleasing.
Paradigmatically, the lead single, “Stainless Steel,” booms Steve Albini-like with sturdy yet subtle drumming, massive stereo guitars, and all manner of counterpoints and complements emanating from the keyboard, in support of a melody – a classic Glitterer melody – that twists and turns, starts and stops, and goes exactly where the listener didn’t remotely realize it needed to go. And in Russin’s typically sapient lyrics, listeners hear, without superfluity or mawkishness, the bewilderment, resignation, anger, guilt, and stubborn commitment to beauty and community that the album exists to express. It’s the dialectical inner monologue of a socially engaged, intellectually curious creative aspirant who can’t help but notice that it’s all coming to nothing. The music video, directed by Zeijlon, was released on Oct. 16.
“It’s everywhere I turn / I can’t escape / I wish I had ability innate / I wish I wasn’t incapacitated,” Russin sings. “I’ll pretend that I’m stainless steel / I’ll forget that this all is real.” What more needs to be said?
These are not optimistic times, and this is not, at the textual level, an optimistic record. Case in point, from “Until”: “There is nothing you can’t have / Don’t be afraid to reach and grab / Take and take with no regret / See if you can find the end / There is always more / Until there’s not.”
Also, from “Not Forever”: “Arc of progress bend towards me … / Have I grown complacent / After all? … / Self absorbed and so important / Aren’t we all? / Everything and everybody / Individual.”
And yet, insofar as the lyrics refuse to put any kind of gloss on the emotional truth of the current moment, the music on “erer” dedicates itself, with intricacy and care, to the listener. A band that wanted only to aggrandize its own precious feelings of alienation wouldn’t go to the trouble of writing choruses and solos as powerful and effective as these. Ever since Glitterer began in 2017, when Russin began inconspicuously recording and releasing songs out of his New York apartment – short, spooky synth/drum-machine-based existential ditties that made toes tap and skin crawl – the songs have reliably gotten brighter, crunchier, catchier, and less ambivalent about their own charms. In this regard, “erer” is something of an apotheosis, a record that says, “Yes, the world-at-large is miserable and dissolute, but music is eternal and beautiful, and can’t be taken away from us so long as we continue to play it. So that’s what we’re going to do. We have to.”
Physical records, featuring art by Andrew Peden, will be released on Friday, Nov. 21 via Purple Circle. Hometown fans of Russin can pick one up in person and get it signed this Thursday, Nov. 20 at Gallery of Sound (186 Mundy St., Wilkes-Barre Twp.), where the group will play a free all-ages release show starting at 7 p.m. A full Glitterer tour will follow in February with Graham Hunt and Prize Horse.
According to Paste, Glitterer became “a full-band powerhouse riding the momentum of great, post-hardcore-influenced power pop” last year with their third album, “Rationale.” With twelve tracks that balance loud, melodic post-hardcore elements, the LP is both deceptively simple and richly complex, revealing subtle and intricate inspirations and themes with each listen.
The recording came together in May of 2023 after hitting the gig circuit as a newly formed full band for over a year, including a run with Scranton indie rockers Tigers Jaw and a headlining summer tour. Originally just Russin and his laptop, the band’s flushed out sound included commanding guitar and percussion from Mike French and Zeijlon respectively (with Connor Morin recording guitar and Jonas Farah playing drums on the record), lifted by Dao’s shimmering keys. To record the album, the band took up residence for a week at a Philadelphia Airbnb – where the hot water worked about half the time – and each morning they commuted to the studio.
“Rationale” “tries to accept our hypocritical idiosyncrasies simply as human,” Russin noted. “That the push and pull between finding purpose and feeling lost, and maybe even as far as if we even exist or not, are maybe just the same side of an arbitrary coin.”
Photo by Alex Szantos
