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This is the problem with quarantine albums. The thing that starts with "p" and that we don't name anymore had mixed effects depending which kind of person you were. I personally enjoyed the introspection, made the best out of my time at home, set up an office, watched movies, played videogames, cooked, and watched the world go to shit in real time from the sidelines. Nihilistic me was happy, the rest of me... maybe not so much. For musicians, on the other hand, who are permanently on a constant war with themselves, isolation had a wide variety of effects, which have been unraveling in the last two years with quarantine- manufactured music pouring out of the presses like water out of an overflowing dam. Some artists came out of the global pause with some of their best material, an enhancement of their craft, new sounds, evolution or whatever you want to call it. Others weren't so prolific, or cerebral, for lack of a better word. When heart and emotions lead your art, the only guide through the writing and recording process reads like an encephalogram of pain and distress orbiting your thoughts, and the thing that starts with "p" had plenty of that in store for Clementine Creevy and Cherry Glazerr.
Being an avid Cherry Glazerr fan since
Apocalipstick (I know, one album late, I know), it's been a mixture of excitement and preoccupation to see Clementine Creevy growing up as a songwriter and performer. With every new album, my first thought has always been around the likes of: "Damn, this is great but... is she ok?" Little has changed with
I Don't Want You Anymore, the band's fourth release and third with Secretly Canadian. You might have heard this before but, Cherry Glazerr's latest recording is the trio’s darkest and more mature album of their career, and this comes with some caveats.
You see, I like Cherry Glazerr when they are at their most hilariously heavy and ridiculous ("Juicy Socks"? "Wasted Nun"? "Nurse Ratched"? lol wut), so I'm not gonna lie, it took me some time to warm up to Painful Glazerr. As Clementine Creeve has declared herself in several interviews during the ten years the band has been active, the core of her emotional struggle is not to be found in lovers, family, or friends, but in her battle with herself, which somehow ends up branching into her relationship with the rest of the human race. If you take the album title for example, and you apply it to this idea, you could say that this is Creeve realizing that she's done with some sort of former self, this album being then the snake's dead skin that stays behind while she moves on towards the future and beyond. But what is left? What’s this mesh of quarantine woes and emotional meltdown composed of? Or even better, since we are on a music website... How does It sound? Well,
I Don't Want You Anymore sounds like an album that struggles between being Cherry Glazerr and being Clementine Creeve. I'll explain.
Leaving aside the first two cuts, we'll talk about that later,
I Don't Want You Anymore starts to make sense on the third track. The run from "Ready For You" to "Sugar" is classic Fuzzy Glazerr on fire like you would expect from Clem and the gang. It’s perfect. Choruses that come out of your mouth inadvertently when in a meeting with your boss, beats that draw out your best moves naked in front of the shower room mirror, distortion, euphoria... you know, Cherry Glazerr in all its glory. On the second half things take a dramatic turn, and whether it is for good or worse, that's something that will remain subjective to each one of you. For myself, picture this: I felt like I was in a party, or in a concert, having the time of my life and suddenly everybody left, the lights became dim, and I was left with this really good friend of mine who was a bit drunk and very sad, and I had no other option than to listen to her story for the rest of the evening in a tone that I wasn't used to while navigating utter confusion, but then lights go up, music blasts again and everybody came back for a last shot, what a blast. And then comes the morning after, with an aftertaste that speaks of fun and mild confusion while one tries to put together the pieces of this emotional puzzle of a record.
Songs like "Wild Times", "Shattered", or "Eat You Like a Pill" show Clementine exploring new ideas and approaches, making use of softer vocal registers, somber atmospheres, and much less guitar fuzz, or even none at all. It’s an interesting approach, obviously the result of Clementine being the co-producer along with Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Girlpool, etc.), but I can’t help to think how a song like “Eat You Like a Pill” would have sound if it would have been recorded by the band that did
Stuffed & Ready in 2019 (more fuzz, basically). All in all, these more "experimental" tracks had some very pleasant surprises, with "Golden" including sax leads and Clementine singing in a whispery register that falls outside of her usual belting. The album opener too, "Addicted To Your Love", is also a strange way to open the album, a little folk tune that defies its placement especially when following by the bouncing disco beat of “Bad Habit”, which then unfolds the rest of the album in way that, like I said above, starts to make sense.
I Don't Want You Anymore features both the band's inimitable post-grunge and noise rock of old while offering, and even challenging the listener with synth pop tunes and gloomy disco bops that are not what you would expect from Clementine and her crew. With this said and done, I foresee an inevitable relapse into full fuckery and craziness again in future albums. It is inevitable. For now, though, we're left with what could be Cherry Glazerr's... “transitional” release. Transition into what? Hell, I don't know, we might as well be singing about juicy nuns and wasted socks again in the near future, or sweeping the floor to Clem’s new metalcore phase. For what is worth, and even if you don't, we still want you, Cherry Glazerr, we’ll always do.
