Glitterer: No Time To Waste
More often than not, an LP has roots stretching back a number of years. When Ned Russin of GLITTERER started writing for what would become Rationale back in 2021, the world looked very different to the world we have come to experience today and in many ways this LP is Ned’s interface with that world and how it has evolved over those years.
“I felt like I kind of had to leave music behind in a weird way,” he explains, “almost like I had to grow up and get a job. Touring seemed impossible and I was just like, okay I guess I have to move on with my life.” The dread that accompanied this sense of having to put everything you have known and loved for the past decade or more of your life is thankfully not one that triumphed. “I also knew that wasn’t true, but it was a kind of reckoning with these kinds of ideas,” he reflects.
One of the attendant factors of writing for such a long time as a solo endeavour is the inevitable loneliness that comes with the territory, although Ned explains that insecurity creeps in in more covert ways. GLITTERER songs are famously short, and, while they may from time to time sound incomplete, this is not the case. “A lot of it also had to do with my insecurity of being the only person in the band and thinking, well, I don’t want to waste people’s time.”
Fortunately, Ned has perfected the short song, not falling for unnecessary repetition or solos, but punctuating his ideas and very much leaving the listener wanting more. “My philosophy for the majority of my life has always been that I would rather someone say: I wish your song was longer, rather than: I wish the song was shorter.” This sensibility, lifted from the punk and hardcore scene, is central to his philosophy on songwriting. Ned cut his teeth in the hardcore scene in and around Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and knows well the effectiveness of those short songs. “I think that’s why hardcore is so effective is because it’s a quick little burst of emotion. I think part of my thinking for the band was: how do you capture that same energy and emotion without everything being full gain, distortion, everything turned up to 10?”
In this attention driven culture that we now find ourselves in, does GLITTERER pander to those who can’t sit still? Unlikely, it has been this way since their inception. In fact, this restlessness is habitual for Ned, more than perhaps his audience. “I’m not a perfectionist. I don’t want every little detail of every song to be the exact way it needs to be. We have a lot more songs to write. We’ve got a lot more songs to play. Let’s keep moving. That’s kind of where I’m at.” He readily admits there are no grand narratives here, rather vignettes and fleeting moments, “zoomed-in ideas about myself and about my own anxious psyche that are attempting to stand in for much larger ideas about where culture is at.”
GLITTERER is now a full band, which makes for a much richer sonic experience. Nicole Dao, for instance, takes care of keys throughout and had not been in a band prior to her being invited into this project. Her excitement for this novel experience proved fruitful for Ned in what may have otherwise been a stale period for him. On welcoming Nicole, Jonas and Connor in to write and record with him, he admits, “it was hard to figure out, just because it’s like everybody is walking into an existing relationship and trying to figure out how to make sense of it and not trying to steer the ship too harshly in any new direction,” but it ultimately was the best thing for advancing his project. “We made the best record that we could with everybody feeling like they had their say and had their input.”
As such, Rationale glides by, with droning keys providing a pillowy softness on which Ned’s trademark, raspy bass provides the backbone for his latest meditations on modern life. A relationship which has now started to pay dividends is with producer Arthur Rizk, with whom Ned has collaborated for many years. “We knew Arthur through WAR HUNGRY, he joined them as a fill-in. They’re from Wilkes-Barre too, so we had just kind of met him through mutual friends and him eventually joining the band. We recorded the TITLE FIGHT song off of the first Triple B America’s Hardcore comp with him. He had done sound for us and a couple shows by that point.”
Bringing Arthur in and giving him a role in the direction of the record continues to be a worthwhile exercise, “he really understands the nuance of references and of the songwriting in a way that is very unpretentious,” bringing in references that would not have occurred to Ned but which expand the field just enough to recontextualise and elevate the source material.
“It’s important for the band because it gives us different possibilities to explore. A lot of these are disparate influences but there are things in all of these bands that connect them somehow.” Post-punk staples such as SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES and fellow masters of the short song, GUIDED BY VOICES come into conversation, met with a knowing smile yet conceding little ground. “I want to be a band that’s very much of 2024, but I still want to know what came before us and why it worked, while trying not to exist in the past.”
There is very much a sense that GLITTERER have finally found their feet here, and certainly sound more accomplished for their new editions in the rehearsal room. Perhaps through years of writing alone and performing in a very stripped back fashion honed his self-awareness, but Rationale is a thoroughly more assured offering from a band who have moved through periods of experimentation to produce Rationale, which is richer and warmer for it.
Rationale is out now via ANTI- Records.
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