8:00pm.
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Glitterer was born in August of 2017, when the eponymous Glitterer EP appeared on Bandcamp. To some, Glitterer seemed to manifest the parallel identity, something between an alter-ego and a superego, of Ned Russin, who wrote, sang, and played every note of the EP’s eight songs. Ned Russin is a New Yorker, by way of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a 29-year-old bassist and singer who made his name in music by playing in a band called Title Fight.
Glitterer features spartan instrumentation — bass, drum machine, synths, and a familiar voice — and its compositional ethos, such as the listener can grasp, lies in hyper-efficient deployment of discrete harmonic and melodic ideas, also known as verses, choruses, and bridges. Looking Through The Shades, Glitterer’s debut full-length album, was released on Anti- in summer 2019. Recorded in the cozy carpeted basement of the Russin family home, in Kingston, Pa., and co-produced by indie-rock prodigy Alexander Giannascoli and the Arthur Rizk (Code Orange, Power Trip, Sumerlands, the 2018 Grammy Awards), the album not only contains Glitterer’s best-yet sonics and songs; it has been constructed in such a way as to evince a spirit — co-operative, semi-schizophrenic, greater than the sum of its parts — that is proper to rock bands and that is inaccessible to even the least self-involved Soundcloud rappers and bedroom artists.
Simply put, Looking Through The Shades is the sound of a group of people playing music, together, in a room. Now we have live drums (Ned’s brother Ben does the honours) and dopamine-releasing fuzzy guitars (Ned’s other brother Alex contributes a solo) to go with the synths, the bass, and the voice. Now we have a 14-song-long thematic arc, carefully sequenced. Meanwhile, the lyrics are still reluctantly but rigorously self-aware, the choruses are still habit-formingly catchy, and the arrangements still carry not an ounce of excess fat.
Justus Proffit knows that world better than most, having grown up in the LA's underground punk scene. A lifer at 25, Proffit started playing in bands at 13, touring at 16, and running his own DIY space by 22. Living and creating on the fringe has deeply informed his work as an artist—the 2016 EP Magic, the 2017 EP UPS/DOWNS, his recent collaboration with Soundcloud breakout Jay Som, Nothing’s Changed—but never more powerfully than on his debut full-length, the tellingly titled L.A.’s Got Me Down (Bar/None Records, March 2019).
A mixture of new material and songs he’s written over the past few years, L.A.’s Got Me Down explores a tumultuous time in Proffit’s life, one punctuated by the loss of close friends to drug overdoses, a war with personal demons, and the more mundane aspects of being an artist in a city as notoriously standoffish as Los Angeles.
Given the darkness that permeates much of L.A.’s Got Me Down, “fun” seems an odd descriptor, but the album doesn’t wallow. Anything that can be described as “my ‘Back in Black’”—as Proffit calls “Shadow of the Cross”—won’t be a slog. After his more subdued EPs, he had no intention of keeping the intensity down. “I wanted to come out with a rock record this time,” Proffit says. “I’m happy to start playing loud music again.”
Even as Proffit navigates a minefield of loss and regret, L.A.’s Got Me Down never loses its propulsive, toe-tapping edge. “Shadow of the Cross” boasts the biggest, catchiest chorus of Proffit’s career, and the sunny guitars of “Painted in the Sound” reflect the lovelorn lyrics at its center. Listeners will undoubtedly hear echoes of Heatmiser-era Elliott Smith, and “Hole” recalls Nirvana’s “Dumb” in sound and theme. But the vision is singularly Proffit’s.
ANTHONY
Anthony Anzaldo of Ceremony.