Gleemer are a quartet from Colorado who make a very interesting blend of emo-tinged indie rock, introverted bedroom pop and shimmering shoegaze. It comes across as something like early Manchester Orchestra meets Dawn Golden meets The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. Like on their previous EP, No Goodbyes, Gleemer use Moving Away to explore a period of life rife with emotion, worry and agony, where heart-bursting hope is constantly dashed by gut-wrenching sadness. Imagine an Easton Ellis story without the wealth or the cold emotional indifference.
‘Gauze’ is a great start, chugging along before blossoming into the chorus, “Do you remember how we used to be / cologne in the bathroom where we used to read”, eventually gathering enough momentum to unloose itself in the finale, a cathartic end in which Coffman is joined by backing vocals. ‘Heater’ feels more jangle pop, although there is still plenty of racing electric guitars to give that spiky edge. The vocals sound sadly romantic rather than just plain sad, revealing thoughts on a difference of expectation and unrequited advances (“I feel so useless when I’m around you / you collect it all up but I’m barely another friend”). ‘Fall Out’ has this big clanging guitar in the background and a marching drumbeat, giving things a dark and vaguely defiant air, like the slow and steady progress through some desolate wasteland, which I guess is a pretty apt metaphor for many an adolescence. The track’s tangible, pounding mass is juxtaposed by the soft and dreamy vocals which seem resigned to something, the steely realisation that comes after shame and disappointment.
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‘Lily’ is dark and brooding, its big guitars elevating a sense of internal turmoil rather than some trite epic tendency, while acoustic guitars dominate on ‘Cool Back’, a reserved and melancholy interlude in the loud indie rock. The slow and sweet opening to ‘Champ’ belies its subject matter, which feels sore and raw, like an open wound (“You were right all that time / to feel like nothing you said made any difference”), while ‘Trade Up’ is another slice of shoegazy indie pop. ‘Dragging’ is tense and meditative shoegaze (“I spend a lot of time thinking of the way I let my parents down”), before closer ‘Long Hair’ epitomises the rawness of the album as a whole:
“It was like you said I stayed up for months
Will this damn headache open up for once?
Like I loved you in the first place”
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Moving Away seems to be set in the calm between storms, a long hot summer before the next period of a young and troubled life. A moment of reflection that offers some people perspective, a clean slate, and drives others insane with anguish and regret. It conjures a feeling like driving around deserted streets at 3am because anything is better than trying to fall asleep listening to the whir inside your head. Like previous Gleemer releases, Moving Away is very human and intimate and simultaneously elemental, some of the crashing instrumentation suggesting that these feelings and changes go far beyond the individuals involved, characters doomed to universal worries and failings, trapped in the same destructive and self-repeating cycles.
You can get Moving Away as a name-your-price download via the Gleemer Bandcamp page, or on cassette via 80N7.
