My Top 1000 Songs #472: When I Laugh
Reaching into the darkest corners of my music collection for an undeservedly obscure track! Though "When I Laugh" appeared on the 2000 self-titled sophomore LP from the Athens, GA-based Glands, it's a pretty amazing distillation of the 90s indie rock vibe.
And I'll admit I didn't hear it until some 20 years later, when, following the passing of frontman Ross Shapiro, some new music from the band was posthumously released.
The song has a fantastic pop hook, with those killer call-and-response doo-doo-doos, though it's the skewed guitar rock sound and Shapiro's casual rasp that lands the song squarely in the territory of acts like Pavement, Built To Spill, and Modest Mouse. (Plus, that initial dampened intro cutting loose into a slicker verse recalls a similar production dynamic in a like-minded track I recently posted from Creeper Lagoon.) It's an amazingly offbeat earworm, and even if I've only been playing it for a few years, it feels like it's been a part of my life throughout the millennium.
Live 2003:
Magnificent!
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