Gliss

Devotion Implosion

(Cordless)

Record Review by Marcel Feldmar

This hits with distorted immediacy into a “Just Like Honey” styled noise beat fuzz beauty. You know it ain’t the Jesus and Mary Chain, but you would be hard pressed to think of anything else for the first few seconds. Then it moves, almost surprisingly, into something different. The walls of noise still threaten to come crashing down on your head, but the melody that floats under it all is sweeter and more beckoning than you would expect. It catches you by surprise, as do Victoria Cecilia’s vocals, and you are still feeling that rush of static, but it feels safe.

There’s a little garage roughness that kicks in, like some Singapore Sling, or Raveonettes, but behind all that guitar crashing bravado lies the delicacies that bring Gliss closer to your musical heart. The third track, “Sleep”, kicks in with a slow beauty, touching a Slowdive movement with a Mazzy Star seduction, and you know that it probably won’t get any sexier than this. We move out of that deep velvet bedroom and drift, still a little dazed, into the slowed down Strokes groove of “Beauty.”

So you are feeling relaxed, comfortable, ready to slide along with Gliss, but they aren’t going to let you get away that easy. “Anybody Inside” hits, still a little slow and moody, but now there’s this harsh frantic almost anxious edge of intensity that pushes against the beats and rhythms, and while it’s still moving in some strange, I don’t know, neo-psych-gaze manner, your pulse pushes you up and out into movement, and Gliss is in your blood. “Lovers In the Bathroom” touches upon a little of that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club dark sparkled rock ‘n’ roll, but with a little more of a trippy swirling light show feel. Black Rebel Lovers Club? Perhaps.

Then, just when you think, perhaps, you’ve got it figured out, and are ready to settle back into your groove, Gliss kick you up and out again with a pretty and evil little shake your hips beach boy be-bop Phil Spectorific go-go car crash, and it makes me feel like going to some post-apocalyptic clam bake and dancing the night away.

Now you’re just thinking, what next, where else can this band take me, and how do they manage to keep such a consistently beautiful and noise filled feel throughout

The entire album, when each song pulls me slightly into different directions and different worlds. Well, that’s what I’m thinking, and I have no idea how they do it, but it feels great. “The Patrol” hits like some Love & Rockets penned Pulp Fiction riff, and I’m blissed… until I realize that there’s only two more songs left. Dammit.

“Love Song” is a heavy dirty dirge soaked in shimmery gaze glory. Those Love & Rockets tones careening into BRMC backfire and then tripping out on some car crashed codeine. It’s a slow dream that just feels right. It feels, as the last song slips in to this glorious Devotion Implosion, as if it’s time to pray to those gods of sonic life. This last song, “Sister Sister,” is a slow hymn, a noisy prayer, a touch of sadness and a farewell. The songs are done, the music is over, and I feel like I’ve lived another lifetime.