Texas shoegaze band, Glare’s latest single, “Nü Burn,” is a crunchy and lilting number that harkens back to the band’s grittier hardcore roots. But even when they deign to go hard, you can hear a softening in Glare’s sound compared to any of their previous releases, as well as an attempt to lean into more traditional pop song structures. The music drifts heavenward, to be sure, though it’s still tethered down by steady foundations. It’s beautiful. It’s humid. It’s delirious. It’s music made by people whose feelings speak louder than their words.
Glare shares, “‘Nü Burn’ is about how it feels like the world stops when you’re grieving. ‘I’ll find you in a new sun, feel a new burn’ means finding those we lost in the warmth we feel… it’s a big, explosive song and probably our heaviest. When we finished writing it we immediately knew it’d be a single.”
When you hear music like Glare’s—the wild, loose and woozy drags of guitar; the impossible beauty of it all—what kind of landscape presents itself in your mind? Vistas big enough to be forgotten in. Deserts which stretch back to the beginning of time. Infinite horizons melting into pink bokehs. It’s Texas, isn’t it?
Sunset Funeral, the band’s debut LP (out April 4 on Deathwish Inc. + Sunday Drive Records) is a fog of dreamy grief, where feeling supersedes language. On first listen, the album—which scans as vast as desert sand—may overwhelm the senses. But look closer, and you’ll find a multiplicity of heavily crushed textures, treasures.
Formed in 2017 in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, Glare aren’t so much genre traditionalists as they are painters of wide realms and intense moods. The four-piece band has already accumulated a large audience, both in the flesh with their reputation for sell-out shows, and on the internet, a place where people go to short-circuit feelings through their screens.
