You won’t find much about Gliss on their site, their label’s or their publicist’s. Their official channels prefer to keep an enigmatic air about the band offering not much more than “Gliss is a Danish/American three-piece.” Notice the distinct lack of a genre, which I don’t fault them or any band for not offering up a genre. It’s not band’s job to pigeonhole themselves. That’s the uninteresting but necessary job of critics, bloggers, and radio programmers to help a lazy public digest music without actually listening to it. Readers of this blog listen to the music first, genres and categories be damned, right? Can I get an amen! Thank you.
I still have to do my job, so here goes. Gliss is, simply put, a pop band. And all I mean by pop in this case is that they keep their vocals up high and clear in the mix. Musically, it’s a different story. If you dig back into their discography you can hear anything from punchy garage tracks, sounding a lot like Japan’s glam rock phase, to Autolux’s laconic, brooding work to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s wall-of-guitars. Judging from these tracks off their forthcoming album Langsom Dans, Gliss seems to have shed the heavier guitar work and replaced it with softer beats and a rich array of electronics and echoing voices. I appreciate bands willing to test new waters, to push themselves and their sounds beyond their origins. It keeps an air of discovery about them for the band itself and for jaded music geeks.
Today’s downloads come from a new EP from an Australian quintet that may find themselves in legal hot water with a certain US-based scouting organization when said organization finishes boiling in its own stew of legal, ethical and PR problems. Cub Scouts formed just over a year ago and have been cobbling together songs on their bandcamp page. “Evie” got lots of spins on Triple J and they’ve been playing around locally, but it may be a while before they hit stateside. That’s OK. They have time to craft another batch of songs while their fellow Aussies in San Cisco test the waters here next year. We’ll see how well Americans take to cute, indie-popsters from down under. I say the more the merrier, especially considering the depth of Cub Scouts’ gems. Did I tell you how great the title track is? I’d hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so.
I know sushi rolls aren’t really sushi. I get it. I respect it. On my block there’s a sushi place that flat out doesn’t serve rolls. They won’t have anything to do with desecrating the simple beauty of fish on rice. I also respect our western notion of wrapping up fish in a slathering of mayonnaise, deep frying it until it’s delicately golden, chopping it up and dousing it with Sriracha, or any combo of the three. My favorite sushi roll in the world is the 
