Glass Beach "the first glass beach album" (2019)

How do I even begin to talk about an album that has been a favourite of mine for the past year? At the beginning I suppose, I first discovered Glass Beach through a friend of mine a year and a half ago, surprisingly I didn't like it immediately, I thought the instruments were odd and the vocals less than perfect, the lyrics and energy were fun, but that was about it. Then I rediscovered it months later and decided to give the 1 hours long record a proper listen through.

I fell in love with the record, the first glass beach album is a torrent of post-emo maximalism, off tune synths and catchy pop-punk. Inspired jazz and ambient interludes separate the hard hitting tracks on this record, it's dazzlingly creative and inventive. The songs are intricate and aggressive but keep a fun air to them.

The band came together in 2015, J McClendon, solo artist under the alias Casio Dad and newfound facebook friends William White and Jonas Newhouse joining them when they posted about needing roommates in Los Angeles, William and Jonas were already big fans of Casio Dad and had to take the chance. J had ideas for certain tracks in their mind all the way in 2015, though practice and writing for most of the tracks didn't start until a few years later. The band's sound is niche, but their fans are passionate, so much so that Run for Cover issued the record to be released on vinyl just 8 months after its initial Bandcamp release in May 2019.

Glass Beach separates long 6 minute 5th wave emo songs like "bedroom community", "Yoshi's island" and "Dallas" with shorter jazz and ambient influenced songs like "forever????" and "calico" , they help break up the sometimes hectic and emotional energy of the other tracks. J McClendon has talked about it, stating "I’ve always just been more into the idea of listening to a whole album all the way through" The band has naive lyrics but they deliver them in such a way that it feels real and genuine, they've committed to their artistic decisions and follow them with conviction, the confidence is what makes it so appeasing.

Some of my favourite songs on the album are "bedroom community" which follows a queer girl in a religious household, and her suicide which is at the hand of media outlets that publish impossible goals of femininity. Or the song "cold weather" which is about a queer relationship, J singing about how they don't miss the cold weather or the things that remind them of where they lived, they miss these things because of the relationship they had when they used to live there.

All in all, this album is an absolute 10/10 in my eyes.