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By Chris Barry
ARTS WEEKLY FEBRUARY 23, 2005
GETTING CLOSER...
It’s that time of the year, when we break out the overlooked and the underrated.
One that fits this niche snugly is Monmouth County’s Glen Closer, a Red Bank
based three-piece that glides between musical identities while maintaining an
outwardly strong aural persona.
The band’s self-titled 10-song CD is a follow-up to their well-received debut
Pineview Grocery release, and showcases the band’s style with a sharper snap and
ever-deepening lyrical thrust. We dug the first tune, the smashing psychodelic
pop punch of “Get Up And Go,” fueled by the band’s harmonies and Baeszler’s
guitar that scorches, hovers and just shimmers around this song.
Also liked “Seven Of Nine,” a racing, bracing cruncher with a great guitar break
a la Byrds meet Replacements, and the gentle spaciness of a swaying fuzz guitar
that tells the tale of “Hung By A Thread,” about a relationship trying to avoid
going over the edge.
Overall, we have to say the vocal harmonies throughout sound skin-tight, almost
like DNA linking up, while sometimes Glen Closer just jump ship to a different
sound entirely. As on the hoodoo-voodoo rockabilly riff and Johanna’s breathy,
telling vocals that drive “Uncle Uncle.” With dense, chunky riffs bouncing
around, this musical tale of a head game in progress makes you think and slink
too…
And check out the chasin,’ strokin’ pop crasher that is
“Supernatural/Incandescent Sea,” how “from the comfort of another room she
haunts me,” and how he stuck around “all these years to see what she sees in
me.” This one’s surely a keeper, with a relentless rhythm section telling the
tale.
While somebody besides me saw A Mighty Wind and wrote an electrified folk-rock
swayer that builds in intensity, leaves a nice taste about life’s energy and you
remember it the next day, like “The Sun Is Awake.” But it wouldn’t be a band
with Johanna White without “Wouldn’t Be,” where White’s distinctive vocals run a
gamut from joyous to resigned yet torchy tones in this moody acoustic builder
that ultimately soars.
By the way, Glen Closer is Johanna White, bass and vocals, Joe Rubin on drums
and vocals and Jim Baeszler on guitars and vocals, and they hail from
Shore-based projects like Film, Just Us, Just Maybe and File 13.
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