Interview with Glass Beach

Glass Beach have a gift for making 0) CHAOS (a state, when there is no order; 5 letters) sound carefully constructed. The Los Angeles band’s 2019 1) d_ _ _ _ _ (first public performance, appearance, or recording; 5 letters), The First Glass Beach Album, was audaciously maximalist and wildly inventive in the way it both fused and revitalized elements of pop-punk, bedroom pop, and art rock; the effect was by turns playfully 2) c_ _ _ _ _ (like a cartoon, esp. in being one-dimensional, brightly colored, or exaggerated; 10 letters), bizarre, haunting, and hyperreal. Its long-awaited follow-up, plastic death, is similarly 3) a_ _ _ _ _ (intended to satisfy high goals, having big ambitions; 9 letters). Yet even more deliberate and 4) _ _ _ _ _ (seeming to surround the listener or viewer so they feel totally involved in the experience; 9 letters) – not only in stitching together disparate styles that move beyond their original identification as a “post-emo” group, but also in the juxtaposition of 5) c_ _ _ _ _ (attractive and easy to remember, of a song or an advertisement; 6 letters) tunes and labyrinthine arrangements, deceptively simple song structures and multi-part, polyrhythmic epics. Emotionally and thematically, too, front person J. McClendon’s shift toward abstraction allows them to 6) e_ _ _ _ _ (to look at something closely and carefully in order to learn more about it; 7 letters) the relationship between aggression and tenderness, nostalgia veering into mania, the self through society, in a way that – for all its historical, 7) f_ _ _ _ _ (not real or true; existing only in stories; 9 letters), and philosophical 8) r_ _ _ _ _ (the act of mentioning or alluding to somebody or something (plural); 10 letters) – doesn’t elude present reality so much as violently point at it. That it doesn’t completely fall apart is 9) e_ _ _ _ _ (facts, information, documents, etc. that confirm something; 8 letters)that glass beach have no interest in recreating the past – a terrifying prospect – but rather destroying and breathing new life into it, a ceaseless cycle that seems like our only mode of survival.

We caught up with Glass Beach– J. McClendon, lead guitarist Layne Smith, bassist Jonas Newhouse, and drummer William White – to talk about one of their hit songs titled Coelacanth.

The interviewer: The first thing we hear is a conversation. I think, about 10) t_ _ _ _ _ (lasting for a limited time, not permanent; 9 letters) art, between Layne and his roommate.

William White: My brother Chris lives with us, and it was between Layne and Chris.

The interviewer: You don’t have to talk about the bits that are inaudible, but how and when did you decide it should open the album? Layne Smith: That was largely because the piano on that was primarily recorded by Jonas with his phone, and the phone just happened to pick up their discussion

J McClendon: Their talk kind of happened to sync with the rhythm of the piano in an interesting way. But that was literally just a demo for Jonas being like, “Oh, here’s an idea for a song.” And then I think we just realized that we liked that specific recording of it a lot, and it became the 11) s_ _ _ _ _ (the cause or the beginning of something; 4 letters)of that song. And because the song floated out of it like that, it only made sense for it to start the album. I think what you’re getting at in their discussion kind of ties to a lot of the themes of the album, but it’s so obfuscated, which I think is great.

The interviewer: J, you’ve said that your songwriting 12) a_ _ _ _ _ (the way of dealing with or thinking about something; 8 letters) generally went from being narrative–driven to something more abstract and this is the first taste of that. What made you lean in that direction for this album?

JM: Yeah, I think it came from wanting to get closer to emotional truth in writing rather than literal truth. There’re bits of abstraction in stuff I had done before, but I often find myself getting into dead ends with songwriting, and I want to pivot hard in the opposite direction. I felt like I was getting so specific that the emotions were a little less13) d_ _ _ _ _ (showing or conveying something without anything else unnecessary being involved in between; 6 letters). With this album, it was much more of simply doing what feels right, what 14) c_ _ _ _ _ (represents something accurately and precisely through words or images; 8 letters) the right emotion. It’s more of a “show, don’t tell,” I guess. I think this album has varying levels of abstraction; ‘coelacanth’ has a lot of literal imagery in it. We really wanted to make ‘coelacanth’ almost a parody of ‘[classic j dies and goes to hell] part 1’ off of the first album, and it follows a lot of the same beats. But if you compare it side by side, it’s almost saying the opposite at every one of those beats. ‘Part 1’ was about the good side of community, and this is very much a song about the bad side of that, about mob 15) m_ _ _ _ _ (the particular way of thinking about something; 9 letters) and ostracization.