This album was absolutely magnificent to review. The tunes were really revamped versions of shoegaze staples and Gliss is pitch perfect with their what they’re trying to get across. They had played a show at The Echo last Monday and I was way bummed I wasn’t able to attend. I’ll just have to wait for them to come back from their tour across the pond.
Ground Control Magazine: Gliss ‘Devotion Implosion’
ARTIST: Gliss – [Album]
DATE: 06-21-09
REVIEW BY: Christina Nersesian
ALBUM: Devotion Implosion
LABEL: Cordless Recordings
Gliss is like the Petri dish lovechild of shoegaze greats, alternative rock fire-starters, maybe even some dancey hipster DJs and most definitely includes a dip in the gene pool of the psychedelic pop rock of the 1960s. In their latest release, Devotion Implosion, some tracks scream Pablo Honey while others stand as clear spawns of Psycho Candy with an overall adoption and simultaneous adaptation of Siamese Dream. Sprinkled with a little “Crimson & Clover” over and over, this sophomoric effort is a pleaser throughout for sure.
The Los Angeles-based band’s second full-length album is a sometimes brooding and sometimes blissful nugget of indie goodness. The album weighs heavily on reliably steady beats and appropriately static-ridden riffs punctuated by the hazy vocals of a dreamlike allure. Gliss, in itself, becomes a sort of umbrella act for the sort of musical style embraced by Krautrock bands of yore. Multi-instrumentalists Martin Klingman, David Reiss and Victoria Cecilia make full use of the genre’s musical tendencies in a neat 10-track odyssey through a seemingly drug-induced space of rootless time.
The album starts up strong and steady, motorik beat at the ready with “Morning Light.” The track, with its purposeful clumsiness mindfully finds its place, and then pushes off with a delightfully catchy drumbeat reminiscent of “Just Like Honey,” before diving headfirst into a welcome wall of sound. Weight resting against this seemingly impenetrable fortress of frequencies, the perpetual fuzz suddenly gives way to a pool of distorted guitar riffs, ethereal vocals and subtle harmonies. Left hanging off the breath of one droning note up to the very last second, this track is a clear vision of what’s to come.
Vagrant Journalism 