Glasser – Ring
Glasser is LA-based lass Cameron Mesirow and although she may have missed the boat a little with Ring, she nevertheless seems to be finding alternative transport to convey her message.
Appearing first in 2008 and releasing her well-received debut EP last year, she now finds the musical landscape different. Unquestionably, her direct peer Bat For Lashes did commercially well last year, but 2010 is thankfully less taken with well-produced, quirky female artistes. Happily however, Mesirow has a few tricks up her oversized wizard-sleeves to help her along.
Sitting very, but rarely too comfortably between Natasha Khan and Björk (particularly “Treasure Of We”), Ring is consequently a lush, dense collection of organic electro-pop. Heavy on percussive synth, Mesirow also treats the listener to doses of tribal chant to flavour, sounds of the rainforest to provide mood as well as Nepalese strings to deviate. Keen on flights of fancy as well as fantasy, evocative hand-drummed passages even suggest at an affinity with electro outsiders Telepathe .
With such a busy palette, Ring appears complex, reputedly even being structurally-indebted to The Odyssey of all things, but really it’s a laptop production given its shine by Mesirow’s reluctance to stand in the shadows of her influences. This has its plusses and minuses. As cuts, the totemic otherworldliness of “Apply” and the grand scale of the theatrics on “Home” are hugely enjoyable, but maybe a ring is too safe a structure on which to base this sound.
When faced by an overpopulated niche many of 2010’s listeners demand hooking rather than polishing (see “Plane Temp”, which perhaps, maybe, with its nonsensical vocal sounds like Enya). To its credit, Ring does this more than it doesn’t, but a few more sharp edges would have done it better.
Advised downloads: “Apply” and “Home”.
~Ring is out now on True Panther Sounds .~