Out in the vastness of space, hurtling through billions of miles of unexplored emptiness, you can just make out the sounds of the intergalactic pop circuits of Glorybots. Or you could, if there was anybody out there to hear the swirling musical impulses of terrestrial noisemaker Jalal Andre, the architect behind Glorybots’ sci-fi landscapes and cosmic rock riffs. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has been dismantling a legion of sounds for well over 20 years, spending a good deal of that time with Washington State indie rockers Echo Texture. And while he found a welcoming haven for his brisk riffs and emotionally driven lyricism within the band, there were times when his creativities led him down stranger and darker avenues of melodic abstraction.
Glorybots is the avenue through which Andre breaks free from the confines of traditional rock arrangements, allowing him to focus more on complex thematic development and the various arts of experimental composition. But Glorybots is less of a solo project and more a hybrid offshoot of the things he was working through in Echo Texture – just a lot weirder and without the responsibility of having to filter these sounds through the experiences of his bandmates. Ragged at times, and evoking the echoes of coarser rock influences, these songs are built from the ruins of countless shadowy pop traditions and the churn of alt-rock’s rhythmic density.
There’s a sense of restless inquiry extending beyond the greyed-out edges of these sounds – everything seems to loop around into each other, creating an anomalous and affecting cycle of pop-rock altercations. There are moments when Andre channels the punk leanings of the Pixies before detouring into something that borders on the psychedelic and theatrical – imagine early Flaming Lips jamming with Showbiz-era Muse — and then quickly escalates into chugging riffs that you’d have heard on modern rock radio in the early 00s. It’s difficult to quickly unpack the inspirations housed within Glorybots’ expansive musical foundation, as he never lingers in any one aesthetic for long before crashing headlong into the next.
The debut record from Glorybots, 2018’s Dark Alien Pop, was a curious artifact of Andre’s initial experimentation, and he’s since admitted that it felt a bit too rigid and mechanical, never fully rocking out like it probably should have. But with the release of the band’s upcoming sophomore album Invisible, he’s found a way to include these moments of rockier rhythmic uproar while still sticking to a course of musical abandon, letting his instincts guide the trajectory of each song and the subsequent craggy landscapes which are created and thoroughly excavated.
Opening with the cyber-punk, Batman Beyond-tinged riffage of “Blepharospasm”, the record wastes no time asserting its rock credentials, opening the floodgates for a torrent of spine-tingling industrial rock and mutated pop soundscapes. He somehow combines the twangy aspects of cowpunk on “Radiate” while also channeling the grungy melodies of late 90s to build a roar so voraciously catchy that you’ll be trying to pick it out of your brain for days. Rising into higher vocal registers on “Caged and Confused”, he pulls apart the collective frustrations we experience when we’re beaten down and feel underappreciated, offering understanding and solace but no easy answers, as he’s still working on those himself.
He drops the churn and bombast on “London Breeze” and “Suicide Hotline”, two tracks that highlight his innate awareness of melodic structure and the way it plays into the fabric of our emotions. Lead single “Wrong” mixes crunchy Superchunk-esque riffs with the percussive rumble of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” to create a thunderous roar that never diminishes in intensity. All those years breaking down the musical vagaries between genres have given him a unique insight into the ways these sounds interact and respond with one another. The rabid guitar licks may be gone, but the songs’ dark rock heart and their shivering pop pulses reveal a deeper awareness of how music can act as support and sustainable security for those who just need a few minutes to work through their troubles and the complexities of a sustained internal turbulence.
Balancing the inherent gravitational rock vibes of the music with this sense of emotional inclusivity, Glorybots provides an outlet for both Andre and his listeners to share their personal difficulties while also finding a way to overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Through the dark pop musings and gritty rock narratives of Invisible, Andre and the band – which is often a ramshackle collection of friends and local musicians depending on where the band is playing – have fashioned an unusual and absolutely mesmerizing wall of outlandish tones and textures that sound as if they’ve been beamed in some place way out past the binary mechanisms of Alpha Eridani.
The byzantine works of Glorybots are strewn with walloping guitar riffs, extraordinary melodies and a heart-on-sleeve lyricism that burn through the grit and industry of Andre’s extensive creativities. Effortlessly delving into the darkness of post-punk’s angularity and the rhythmic thump of modern rock’s muscular swagger, he corrals all these sounds and filters them through a sieve of murky pop compulsions. The resulting infusion of aesthetics assists in building a whirling morass of spiked musical infrastructure, generating an undeniable alien electricity that sparks and blows out the sensory receptors throughout your body. The music raggedly radiates and casts an otherworldly rock haze over the surrounding areas and then beckons for our full attention and participation. Where else are you going to have the opportunity to rock out on some distant planetary body?
