'My street as I remember is still the same
Wonder what the people around here say
Only I can turn things the other way
I think my friends have all gave up me'
FEATURE ALERT! Aye, the post I write when I don’t have the
motivation to produce something especially substantial is back, and this time
centres on the opening lines of Glasvegas’ Later... When the TV Turns to Static,
the rumbling, infectious opener (and title track) of the quartet’s latest
effort.
From the start, Later... has the feel of a return, or more
appropriately, a reconsideration – frontman James Allan letting his mind wander
back, after it was propelled across California on the hazy, dreamlike second
album Euphoric Heartbreak, to the shadowed streets that formed the thematic
bedrock of the band’s debut.
However, the lyrics portray an unnerving sense of displacement
– Allan speaks in assumptions and uncertainties, unable to recall a distinct
picture of his home, relying on the ultimately unsatisfactory simulacrum presented
by memory.
This dislocation is entwined with apparent feelings of
isolation. It is unclear whether Allan’s disconnection to his past fuels this
isolation, however, or is caused by it, perhaps being unintentionally self-imposed
after the band’s elected relocation to Santa Monica for their second album.
This time away, for Allan, may have brought with it a sense
of ostracism, and of irreversible loss (hence the nostalgic bent of the song’s
title). Reports of the singer going missing during the recording of the second
album suddenly become a little more understandable, when you hear him discuss
his unease in terms of exile and internment in a correctional facility.
This view is given further credence by the track’s outro, as
the walls of noise fall away to reveal hushed, pining vocals backed by slowly
strummed acoustic chords, sounding unerringly like Allan sitting on the end of
his bed, legs crossed, wistfully pawing at his guitar and only being able to
imagine a world that he no longer feels connected to.
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