Looking Through The Shades (Opaque Red)

Looking Through The Shades, is Glitterer’s debut full-length album, featuring Ned Russin, bassist/vocalist of Title Fight. This is Glitterer all glown up. Now there are live drums (twin brother Ben did the honours) and dopamine-releasing fuzzy guitars to go with the synths, the bass, and the voice. Now there’s a full 14-song tracklist to luxuriate in. Produced by Alex Giannascoli and Arthur Rizk (Code Orange, Power Trip, Sumerlands) the album delivers Glitterer’s best-yet sonics and songs. The lyrics are still insouciantly tortured, in a reluctant-college-boy kind of way, the choruses are still obscenely catchy, and the arrangements still carry not so much as an ounce of excess fat. From the saturated distortion of the opener, “The Race” (“I wish I could look at your life and know it’s mine”), through the road-weary “1001” (“I sang 1,000 songs / didn’t want to sing again”) and the vox-and-bass-only Side B outlier “The News” (“I used to be original”), the listener is simultaneously satiated and left wanting more.