There’s a lot of oomph to the opening bars of “Prove,” the first track in gloryBots’ new album Radiation Skies, but for all this song packs in rhythmic energy, it indulges further in warm tonal goodness the likes of which are a rare commodity anymore. The vocals intertwine and make a melodic patchwork as speckled with humanizing faults as it would be a symbol of rock harmony perfection, and the guitar strings don’t echo into an abyss of reverberating silence like an empty bottle chucked into the ocean. Intimacy is pivotal to our understanding and appreciating songs like “Prove,” “Freefall,” and “False Alarm,” all three of which could have come together to make quite the teasing EP all on their own.
“Servile” really struck me as a guarded work of poetry the first time that I sat down to hear Radiation Skies over the weekend, but its unwillingness to be emotionally exposed just might be its most endearing quality. There’s an earthiness to the lyrical hesitance it wears so fetchingly beside the blunt ironies and optimism of “Unnatural” and “Come at Me,” but it doesn’t feel like the only example of gloryBots refusing to hold back from the audience in this piece. Even when they’re melodically festive, the moodiness of the rhythm – not unlike the landscape that inspired it – is unpredictable and impossible for us to turn away from once we get started in this tracklist.
“Hot Panic” seems like it wants to be more of a throwback to the scattered, searching Britpop sound of a classic alternative scene than it actually can be, but with the melodic wit it throws in our direction, the framework becomes less important beside the substance of the performance we’re witnessing. Radiation Skies’ “Deboucher” is deceptively complicated due to the restrained tempo at which the players can rattle it off, but the beat in this song is what drives up the unspoken tension first introduced to us in “Servile” some four tracks earlier. It’s clear we’re coming into a big climax, but the fierce presence these musicians have has remained unchanged from one angle to another.
Radiation Skies concludes with the thoughtful “‘80s Cusp” and smothering “Titan,” both conflicting with the relatively fundamental song structures that precede them in the LP. It’s as though gloryBots have intentionally waited until we’re at the foot of the Promised Land to inform us that we haven’t seen everything they can do just yet; that their odyssey towards creative nirvana is nowhere near complete, but just reaching a point of significance to both followers and observers this April. Call me crazy, but I think this a far more conceptual effort than any critics are probably going to give it credit for, and if it’s giving us any sort of a sneak preview into what gloryBots have in store for the next installment of their discography, I wouldn’t plan on seeing them lose ground in the industry and among their peers anytime soon. As it stands, this eleven-song tracklist is pretty tough to beat right now.
Kim Muncie