LISTEN TO THESE GIRLS CHERRY GLAZERR
It’s hard out here, trying to stay occupied and informed without the steady stream of new, free, diverse, and predominantly bangin’ live music that Wesleyan usually affords us on a more-than-weekly basis. I sometimes feel like I’ve come home from a playdate at Diddy’s house, and summer break has a difficult time keeping up. That’s not to say that there aren’t cool things going on in the outside world- it’s just hard to beat the volume of and accessibility to new music at Wes. One cool new thing I would mention is a band called Cherry Glazerr that I would like to show some love to- hit the jump!
They’ve gotten some notable play on college radio stations around LA, with their first full-ish album out earlier this year and a couple of local shows under their belt (and hopefully more this summer!). This music is unashamedly bare-bones – it’s part of the charm – it seems homegrown and it’s exactly what I’ve been into lately.
Clementine Creevy’s music gives off impressions of a wide-eyed infatuation with the funny details of teenage life and fully self-aware immaturity, without ever needing to stray into anything explicit or what could otherwise be seen as angsty. She sings about boys, her pets, food that makes her happy, poop- all with the same apparent appreciation and bewilderment that seems to be a prerequisite for every song she writes. The instrumentation is slow, basic and lo-fi in the same way her lyrics are- they’re catchy and they get the job done, without ever really pausing to mess around. Not intensely clever or surprising, but pleasing- they sort of remind me of the basic idea behind a Nirvana or Oasis song, without much of the decoration or attitude.
A band that I can only assume named themselves after one of NPR’s LA branch anchors (whose name is catchy enough already to make me question its authenticity), Cherry Glazerr seems like a musical project made up almost entirely of obscure inside jokes. What’s interesting about their lyrical content, though, is that despite the fact that the band members are probably the only ones who really appreciate the songs’ humor (which might make the lyrics seem frivolous), the images described still seem to make sense in a fractured-narrative sort of way. To me the recordings come off as proof of the purity of the ideas behind the songs – Creevy seems to be able to distill her ideas, observations, and the accompanying butterfly-feelings,no matter how specific or miniscule or fleeting, into a musical piece that addresses the emotion well, and addresses nothing else. I would say I am impressed by that kind of precision.
The simplicity of both the lyrics and music doesn’t seem to be a weak point in Cherry Glazerr’s display, because everything they lay down on tape seems to be a good, honest idea. It’s refreshing to hear a high school band avoid muddling their recordings with mumbling or sound distortion to cover up (what may be) a less-than-inspired core song. CG records their songs proudly, and I can’t fault them for that. It could be attributed to the charm that Clem Creevy makes so immediately apparent in her style and discussion of music, but I think there’s also an earnestness in her songwriting that dispels any sense of irony you might imagine (it’s just cheekiness)- these songs are so silly, but they’re genuine- and they don’t seem labored over, which is why I like them. My favorite tracks are probably the made-for-tv theme “Teenage Girl” and “Grilled Cheese” (which I like to pretend is full of innuendo, but I really don’t think it is). Check these guys out if you have a minute <3.
