REVIEW: glimmers' "Human Furnaces"
With the cancellation of Bamboozle a lot of bands are left with a lot of investment and no return. That is something very apparent to Atlanta, GA's glimmers right now, who are stuck with a whole lot of purchased merch they can only sell online and a canceled tour that was to carry them to the festival. All of this comes right around the release of their sophomore EP. If you don't know who glimmers is, they are, as I said, an Atlanta based band that spun from the solo efforts of their front woman, Maggie Schneider. I myself first heard of glimmers through one of the livestreamed Good Noise Festivals where the band put on a fully produced set at a real venue complete with dancing, cover songs and a well thought out wardrobe.
All of these things may be a bit much for the pop punk scene to take in but glimmers completely embraces this by calling themselves a "pop punk band for theater kids." That is apparent through their music, which has the fun, yet sad, presentation and huge choruses all fronted by vocal melodies straight from a broadway play. They carry this through even to the production. Much of the backing vocals on this EP sound like they are coming from a character on another set longing for the lead and it makes the whole thing click. Another aspect of glimmers music I feel is successful is that, yes, these are theatrical hooks, but they are never abused. Each and every chorus is used the perfect amount before it becomes overbearing, a point that came to me on "Midas Touch," that has somewhere in the neighborhood of four choruses that all feel necessary toward the experience.
The themes of this record being a broken, almost relationship play off incredibly. On "Scared to Lose" we see the protagonist and their love interest hide things from each other because they want their love to work. On "Midas Touch" they realize they're happy with the person, just not so much the situation. From there they go through various stages of self reflection until arriving at the fallout on "Alone Again." I wrote an entire article once on break up music but could not have foreseen the perspective Human Furnaces gave me from my last romantic relationship that's looped back around to a best friendship. It resonated with me so much in fact that I broke a personal rule and have listened to this EP multiple times a day leading up to writing this. That's sort of why this review came so early for how fast I'm usually able to get to things.
I honestly can't even say that Human Furnaces has highlights, the entire thing is worth hearing. I'm an album girl, I figured glimmers would release something so a lot of these songs I haven't heard from for almost a year and I'm glad I waited. I will definitely be continuing to listen to this after the review period. I always include a link on these to support the subject artist, not an album link, it's 2023 you know how to find albums. Please support glimmers in the wake of their canceled shows below and any band for that matter that was affected by Bamboozle.
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