Still Listening

For almost half a year now, we have been revisiting glamglare history in this newsletter by looking at our Song Pick of the Day features from one, five, and ten years ago. This is a pretty random selection, and it is a lot of fun to rediscover the songs we listened to in the past.

Music is a strong trigger for memories, so some songs reveal bigger stories. But for others, there’s nothing, and we’re just scratching our heads. 

Still, there are very interesting findings, particularly in the ten-year bucket. In any case, 2016 was an interesting year for glamglare. In late summer, we met with a musician we had featured and his manager on the Williamsburg Waterfront and decided to present his release show. We had some experience booking live shows after organizing two showcases for the now-defunct Northside Festival with Audiofemme. This led to the monthly glamglare live series at The Delancey, which ran until fall 2019¹ and connected us with many musicians, some of whom became good friends.

However, booking shows is tough work. Filling the bill was a challenge every month. Our Song Pick of the Day feature helped: whenever an artist hailed from New York City, we asked if they would play live. Many said yes. Some played their first shows. All in all, it was a wonderfully rewarding experience.

In the same year, after I learned that Warpaint was announced for Iceland Airwaves, we booked flights to Reykjavík. It became so much more than our third time traveling to see my favorite band: we discovered new favorite bands, made connections, and fell in love with an exciting place for music and more.

In hindsight, 2016 may also have marked a significant turning point for indie music. Iceland Airwaves offers some evidence: the festival began to shrink² in the years that followed, and the number of internationally known acts became smaller. SXSW has sadly followed a similar path.

After all-you-can-listen streaming services moved into the mainstream, it became harder for artists to reach the threshold at which touring the world makes sense. More exciting music than ever is being created, which makes it more challenging for an individual artist to build a global following.

The Airwaves 2016 festival poster hangs in our apartment, and most of the listed bands are familiar. Today, we typically find very few familiar names in festival lineups, even though we actively listen to dozens of new artists every week. That shows how challenging it has become to find common ground in music over the past ten years.

Discovery of the Week: Prozac+ and Il Genio from Italy

A week ago, at a small gathering at our place, we met the 17-year-old daughter of a friend who studies in Florence, Italy, and also DJs. Since we had made several attempts to explore Italian music, we asked her for recommendations. What she suggested was surprising: the punk rock trio Prozac+ (Apple Music | Spotify) and the Electro-Pop duo Il Genio (Apple Music | Spotify). The bands were active in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively, well before she was born. The music is good, and we find Italian a great language for singing. Check out their greatest hits below:

Cover Song of the Week: Frankie Rose - A Forest

A good way to cover a perfect song is to stay close to the original. For her “A Forest,” Frankie Rosereplaced Robert Smith’s wail with a seductive whisper. The rest remains as haunting and mysterious as the 1980 The Cure version.

This Week in glamglare history

1 Year Ago: Gran Fenwick - Armour Hill

‘Armour Hill” comes with an enjoyable amateur Sci-Fi video,

5 Years Ago: Foolish Deep - Looking for the Moon

There’s a nice story behind this song about frontman Caspar M-B chasing the moon in LA on a motorcycle. Since their 2022 live EP, Foolish Deep, released only two more singles, despite their hooky alternative rock that should have found them fans.

10 Years Ago: Mothica - Out Of It

I’m quite happy to find Mothica here, as we have been following her from the beginning of her career. “Out Of Here” on her 2017 EP Heavy Heart is still from her synth-pop phase. She is still very much around and released her last album this June.

Song Pick of the Day

Listen to all seven songs on YouTube, or follow our daily updated Song Pick playlists on YouTube, Apple Music, or Spotify.

• New Age Healers - Moored
• Lois Sedgwick - Look What You’ve Done
• Carmie - First Flight To France
• Maripool - Alone Tonight
• Miliella - Wait for Me
• Shaina Hayes - Tempest
• The Hails - Corruptor

We publish one Song Pick of the Day every day. You can subscribe to receive them by email.

Across the East River in 9 Photos

After a whirlwind week, including a rain-drenched birthday party we hosted for a dear friend, we took Friday off and hopped on the East River Ferry to North Williamsburg. There, we spent a couple of hours at the beach, watching Manhattan turn gold and then pink, before sailing home past the illuminated Brooklyn Bridge and downtown skyline.

1. The Delancey changed the booking for their downstairs venue, but, of course, the pandemic would have brought our showcases to an end not much later. ↩︎
2. 2016 included Reykjavík’s spectacular convention center Harpa for the last time. While the festival expanded to two cities in the following year, a new ownership reduced the footprint again in 2018. ↩︎