Photo by William White

You could feasibly state that glass beach’s sound is informed by the many niche corners of the DIY emo community and subterranean Internet cultures in collision with one another, which created one of the most sonically compelling arguments for the advent of the scene’s fifth wave with their 2019 debut full-length, the first glass beach album. That said, you could also argue that the Los Angeles band in their current state are the result of everything that’s happened in the world since on “The CIA”. Architecturally, they’re still consumed in excess with knotted time sigs, elastic multi-instrumentation, and the listen itself bringing you through an epic in just under five minutes, yet they’ve also honed in a seriousness with their kitchen sink complexity that feels more focused by outside stress — in this case, a perpetual fear of increasing surveillance that now potentially threatens the very existence of communities that make those which glass beach came up through flourish. “Always terrified / Under a spell / Wiretap my head,” sings J McClendon. “I’m a chemical well / Horrified, nothing to hide this emptiness.” The poetic sentiment is one shared by many within their generation, now given a voice through glass beach’s sculpted disruption of the most shit-just-got-super-heavy realizations in an already emo-inducing world. 

Directed by: William White

glass beach’s “the CIA” single is available now on Run for Cover Records.