Glasser - Interiors

It’s a mirage. ‘Interiors’, Cameron Mesirow’s second album as Glasser, is littered with straightforward, single-worded titles; concrete nouns; notions that hide what’s really inside this record. At the heart - and boy does it possess one - is an emotional wrench, a conscience-splitting ode to indecision, anxiety and downright misery.

So, title-wise, forget ‘Landscape’, ‘Design’, Window’ and all its three parts. Pretend for a moment that this isn’t some musical equivalent of an Ikea catalogue. If there’s an obsession with objects, here, they’re static beings that Cameron leans on, or on the odd occasion smashes into pieces.

It’s a record that deals primarily with Mesirow’s own experience of being anxious, panicky in social situations. Sometimes it’ll switch its focus to love (‘Keam Theme’), but on a track like ‘Design’, which concerns itself with spiralling, Oriental-rooted patterns and looped, all-surrounding vocals, it captures the sense of being overwhelmed. Not that the album itself plays out in a similar way; for the most part it’s minimal, although Glasser has a habit of coating genuine feeling in showy effects.

This tends to work to a disadvantage more often than otherwise. Despite opener ‘Shape’ being a colossal Bjork channelling beauty that comes close to breaking point, the bulk of ‘Interiors’ is restless but unassuming. It’s overlaid with sweet strings, unusual percussion, which is all well and good. But when they flood the scene instead of working as a counterpoint to Cameron’s own expressions, the whole thing collapses into, well, very little.

‘Interiors’ ends up looking more like a cluttered room full of unfinished objects, rather than a bright art deco masterpiece that’d send architects into a frenzy. Sinking its strengths in clever but unrewarding production, it’s rare for an essentially minimal record to feel this overbearing.