About Glasser:
crux takes Glasser’s entrancing blend of dreamy experimental pop and layered electronics to explore themes of personal identity, emotional vulnerability, and the human experience. The album maps journeys of self-discovery as she unpacks intimate experiences with a maturity and cathartic outlook. Specifically, the tracks on ‘crux’ discuss the death of an old friend, her meditations on the fragility of life and the delicacy of relationships in times of uncertainty. More than anything it’s about the importance of creativity and writing while healing, and on an individual level, looking inward and the examination of one’s grief, anxiety, and insecurities. Musically it searches outward, it includes the use of traditional folk, Celtic to communicate her Scottish roots, and Eastern-European styles, all introduced to her lush, atmospheric production, intricate vocal harmonies, and complex rhythms. Opener "A Guide" is a pensive and honest introduction. Glasser tells us that, “this one is quite heavy. My first love from back home died suddenly and I watched his burial on Zoom. I recorded ‘A Guide’ just after hanging up. I wanted to make something that sounded sort of like outer space, but like a warm outer space that was receiving. It's called ‘A Guide’ because he showed me so many first things in life, and he was the first close person to me to die, that I felt so mentally, physically, and emotionally connected to. The event of his death sort of felt like my own in a weird way. The vocal recording is the exact same as the one recorded in that moment.” It's an event that had a broader impact on Cameron’s perspective, “I think it was very, very meaningful at the time when it happened, and it remains meaningful, but it's also a symbol to me of human loss and grieving. I think I was always afraid of what would happen to me if I experienced a loss like that. I feared turning into someone else, and actually I felt that I became so much more myself in the process. I think that grief and other vital emotions like it are kind of inside of you already, waiting to be let out by these events.” "Vine" and "Easy" revel in the glitchy left-field pop elements of Glasser’s sound, they’re epic in their scope, with ambitious, expansive synths and strings, and infectious melodies. She says of "Vine", “I wanted to create something where all the parts sound like they're very separated. I was thinking like jazz, actually. It was about getting back to writing music after feeling a bit disconnected from the machinery around making music your profession.” On "Knave" she uses her voice as an instrument, it’s anti-lyrical, with her “vocal chop” played over a slide guitar and dynamic beat. On tracks such as this one, and the divine "All Lovers", Cameron’s relationship with lyrics is clear, “On the last record I sometimes felt I was labouring words that I then regretted later. I like language a lot and I really enjoy writing, but less so the lyrics. Because for me, the emotional conveyance is in the singing. And it never matters to me what I'm saying if I have the performance part of it. I'm more of a melodic person. I care so much more about the colour than words. I think the colour conveys the message better than my words ever could.” Album highlights like "Mass Love" and "Clipt" are interested in the introspection of isolation, the former written on the cusp of leaving her family prior to lockdown and the uncertainty of when she would see her loved ones again, and the latter about finding hope in history. “‘Mass Love’ was written on the plane back from Europe in March 2020, and every day we were reading about so much death. I thought to myself, I might never see my family again. I was feeling very dark. But then I was flying. I wanted to make something that sounded heavenly, as a sort of antidote to the crisis that was unfolding. I wanted to make something that sounded like the skies. And there's this sweeping theme to it, but then there's also this turmoil and storm at the end that’s supposed to be like this hot electricity, the pressure of the sky.” “‘Clipt’ was inspired by folk melodies and the sensorial adventure described in a video of neurologist Bettina Peyton talking about her near-death experience. Grief is a type of magical thinking, a thrust into an unbelievable dissonance with the mundanity of everyday living. Because of this magical thinking I was able to connect with pagan ideology. I wanted to feel grounded in my humanity, no matter how disturbed, so I leaned heavily toward a folk sound. The music created by people isolated in rural or mountain areas, tends to be vocally much longer, more twisted, like colouring outside the lines. I just got interested in how that was happening in every instance around the world where people are left to their own devices. I can’t even tell you why I made this song, but it was by far my favourite one to make.” Toward the end of the LP, the industrial-tinged "Ophrys" paints a profound picture of seduction, in the form of an orchid known for attracting bees using a deceitful evolutionary tactic. “An Ophrys is an orchid that looks like a bee. And so, to pollinate they mistakenly f*ck the orchid because they think that they're mating. It's just a very clever trick and the song is from the perspective of the bee. And it's just kind of got this like Gregorian vibe. I think that so much of love stories involve some kind of trickery, like some kind of like “fooled ya” moment. And I just think it's great. The reveal.” "Choir Prayer", the album’s exquisite closer begins with an A cappella vocal composition and builds to a stunning, haunting climax. Punctuated by the distant clatter of mechanical beats, it weaves disparate elements together into a cohesive, complimentary whole. It concludes an album that seamlessly marries an eclectic array of sounds to create a complete, immersive concept piece about the search for meaning and answers through the creation of art. Coming back to the making of an album after a decade (released 10 years and 2 days after to be precise) wasn’t only therapeutic but necessary to process notions of life and death. “I guess it’s just about the sort of inevitability of us coming to our own fate, and some of the lyrics are about my voice and the fear of my voice disappearing. Itself a kind of death - it’s a death of sorts. This record for me is texturally and thematically half heaven and half earth. crux was a word that stuck with me always, as it’s onomatopoeic, it literally sounds like a vital aspect of intersection. It’s a cross in Latin, and it’s a horizon to me. I’m the crux of this project and I’m on the earth and heaven is inside of me. And in us all.” Born in Boston, raised in the Bay Area by musician parents, Mesirow’s Mother was a founding member of Human Sexual Response, a queer new wave band who performed in the late 70’s into the early 80’s. Mesirow crafted GarageBand demos that pitted her delicate, swooping vocals over sparse electronic rhythms and circular melodies that evoked avant-garde music and global folk at the same time. These tracks made their way to labels True Panther and Young Turks, which released both her albums. She self-released ‘Sextape’, an intimate project that built her production around conversations on formative sexual experiences, which was praised by fans and critics alike, before signing to One Little Independent Records, marking her next creative step.
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