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The Glim Project

The Glim Project

Written by: ASH on 11/07/2007 11:47:57

"First off, fuck you all you indie rocker leaders!" Oh, so we're throwing spears at Arcade Fire and other indies already? Pretty 'straight in your face' aggressive, don't you think Mr. Randall? Nonetheless, I must admit that they do it quite well for a Canadian debutant band, who just recently released their first self-titled debut album. They're powerful, catchy and original, but immensely unknown given that they picked me to write their review. Or rather, I was the one persuading, so lets shift focus to something more important. Directly from Canada, I give you The Glim Project.

"The Glim Project" as a whole, is as hard to define genre-wise as they say themselves. They don't fit into the progressive rock category, but they are too special to be aired...yet. And this is where this Vancouver four-piece becomes interesting. Here you are, sitting around with a fairly unknown newcomer band, but still they manage to perfectly show their originality from track one through interesting drum loops, refreshing guitar solos, and easy to follow riffs. Especially the genuine use of acoustic breaks in their introduction track "Elitist" is noteworthy. For a welcoming track, it does prove itself worthy and manages to describe the whole style of the entire album. Even though the recording quality of the vocals is quite bad, the unforgettable final parts of "Elitist" are simply something I would almost die for to see live, as long as they are able to produce the same old school Muse-like sound on stage, that is. They simply have no complications expressing their steadfast musical style, which is a major advantage for a debut band. I guess those lucky enough to these freshmen live at various European venues in August will definitely feel their raw energy head-on.

But, if we kick off the rock'n'roll euphoria for a while, "The Glim Project" still has some lethal downsides. Bad lyrics can become good through the voice of a great singer, but good lyrics can also become bad if the recorded quality of the singer just plain sucks. Simple as that. My advice would be to re-record the album with more focus on the quality of Lucanus' voice, and make him understand that he does a much better job on tracks where the golden balance between shouting and clean singing is in harmony. When this cosmic balance is broken, like on most of the album's tracks, the already good lyrics just seem to drown silently in dusty shouts, especially on powerful tracks like "Vague" and "Apprentice". In addition to this, it is almost possible to hear Lucanus spit into the recording microphone on the finishing track "Take Me Back". It's a little unserious, but it's understandable that a new group can't create the perfect recording the first time, especially DIY. My best advice would be taking the mint voice quality that Lucanus produces on the tenth track "Say Goodnight" and use this as a starting point for some solid development. Everything can't just be surprisingly great instrumental work as heard on tracks like "Malcontent" and "Coming Home".

So, when tying it all together, "The Glim Project" is a quite surprising and hopeful album with good energy, passion and obviously great sound works. If the band would just work on some better voice recording, then I'm almost certain that a special someone will be handing out some high grades when their next release hits the stores.

Download: Elitist, Say Goodnight, Coming Home
For the fans of: Dream Theater, Mastodon, everything else than Indie.
Listen: MySpace

Release date 20.10.2006
Self Released