Glyders

Since the first moments that this Glyders LP hit the speakers I’ve been drawn back to it again and again. The Chicago band’s been mostly operating in the short format — rolling EPs and singles in a coating of road tar, gravel, and battered denim. As they crest into the creases on Maria’s Hunt, the band finds a nebulous balance between stripped n’ strangled garage beaters, a bongwater bath of stoner grooves, and a hazed saunter of cosmic country. The record plays like the jukebox at the best backwater bar, deftly swapping between a narcotic haze that flickers in time to the broken bathroom lights and the stench of sweat off the dancefloor.

The band rides an invisible wave that rolls towards euphoria, but always lets the undertow drag it back towards numb reality and an empty glass. Glyders find their way nicely between the cracks of the current Cosmic Country egg, expertly riding the greased pedals towards an endless sunset, but unlike a few of their peers, the band traces the invisible threads that bind Suicide, The Velvets, The Long Ryders, and Gene Clark along the way. Their vision of country isn’t a strict reading, and they’re more than content to shift strums into singe when the moment calls for it. The record has the hallmarks of a long lost classic in the making, the kind of crusted yet comfortable album that only grows more endearing with time. Right now, it’s starting to dominate the listening pile for ’23, and shows no signs of waning. A year-end contender poking through in the wee hours of the year.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.