Review Summary: Glass Beach return after a long hiatus to once again throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. This time around, their aim is a bit more intentional. Love it or hate it, the first interesting album of 2024 has arrived.
Y’all see Saltburn yet?
Without getting into the weeds here, Emerald Fennell’s second film has really captivated the imagination of the internet by having a whole lot of everything and, at the very least, a suggestion of a lot of interesting ideas that also manages to find everyone’s feelings -positive or negative- to be kinda right. Everyone understands the film is saying something about sexuality, class, desire, obsession, ownership, and how much of a good song “Time to Pretend” is, but I’ve heard just as many good arguments for why it’s a contemporary masterpiece as I have it choking on the tainted bathwater of its obvious inspirations. For what it’s worth, I liked Saltburn, but that’s almost beside the point -it’s a film that wrings out discourse from whoever sees it. Debating whether or not it’s a worthwhile movie is really something that can only be understood in retrospect: just see it for yourself.
Which is more or less how I feel about
Plastic Death, the sophomore album by Glass Beach. The elevator pitch -if such a thing is possible here- is that it’s essentially Radiohead-by-way-of-Cap’n’Jazz, but you’d be hard-pressed to not single out glimpses and smatterings of just about everything even remotely emo and internet-tinged here. But really, there’s so much to make heads-or-tails of that an offhanded description can really get across. “puppy” is one of the more accessible tracks here, sounding like it could almost be in children’s sing-along movie before exploding into a soaring climax that carries the simple and playful skeleton to the brink of collapse, with singer J pushing her voice to the absolute limit. She tweeted out that it was the most “furry” song that the band has ever put out. I have no idea what the hell she means by that, but I believe her.
The easiest headline to hang your hat on here is that Glass Beach have honed in more on sounding a little more spacey and not quite as hung together by string in ways that can only be considered an improvement. While their penchant for zaniness and sudden shifts in tone are all still here,
Plastic Death seems more together, where the payoffs and reveals are a little more logical and cogent. Living up to its namesake, “rare animal” is a jam-and-a-half that could really only exist with the band getting its *** together a little more, with a skull-splitting finale bursting forth from a calming, yet exotic, groove that sounds at home for a Donkey Kong level or something. Doubly-so for “commatose”, which towers at nearly ten-minutes in length and nearly crams in every angle the band has ever taken with the perspective and craftsmanship that can only come with time.
The flipside of that coin, however, is that Glass Beach are a lot harder of a nut to crack than before. Where once the band was affectionately sloppy and lending its insolvability to the fact that its pictures were smudged, the band has learned honest-to-god subtlety. This can mean that
Plastic Death can sound aimless at times in contrast, but I instead choose to read it more as a living creature that is content to both take its sweet time in between moments of bombast, while also being unafraid to discard the crumb trail of the previous songs in favor of charting a new course. If that sounds a bit contradictory, it is. This is still Radiohead-by-way-of-Cap’n’Jazz after all. The pieces themselves may not entirely lineup, but they are clearly suggesting a whole that I may one day be able to wrap my head around.
Singer J has described
Plastic Death as being about “the body/ a copy of a copy of a…/the simulacrum/virtual self/abyss” and the trans experience and many other things. And just as I did with her explanation of “puppy”, I believe her. I am not sure if I fully understand yet, but I am ready to roll my sleeves up and try.
