A funny thing keeps happening while I’m listening to The Glasses debut EP, Sunbreaks. I’ll be driving along or working away at the computer and when I glance over at my CD player, I’ll think, “Has this song really only been playing for three minutes?”

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that the songs are insufferable in the least. It’s that they are so intricately layered and richly textured that it seems more than three minutes of music has been packed into that amount of time.

The Glasses bring together the lush guitar textures of early Built to Spill—truly the mark of this album—and the lyrical qualities of Morissey when the Prozac was kicking in.

The appropriately named Sunbreaks is thematically consistent, if sometimes bordering on thematically repetitive. Singer Will Wagler weaves images of the sun—little bits of hope—through three of the CD’s four songs. This quintessentially Seattle theme constantly reminds us that while sometimes things are bleak, there’s always the sunbreaks to give us glimpses of light and warmth.

This is a strong debut that does exactly what a good debut should: intrigue me to see where all this great potential goes on a full length. – (7/10) (0) Comments