CD Review: Glass Fingers, “‘this’”

South Portland native shines on polished, electro offering

Posted on Nov. 17, 2011, at 12:40 a.m.

Mainers, like most other people, might prefer to buy their goods locally, as it supports the local economy and helps people more like them — so why don’t we do the same with our music?

Aside from Howie Day, not much Maine music has hit it big or been of professional quality. Now, meet Jesse Gertz, a 20-year-old musician from South Portland.

Gertz has recently been recording under the moniker Glass Fingers, creating electronic music with hints of indie rock. Gertz admits he didn’t always like electronic music, but started making it in middle school because he couldn’t find committed bandmates and the bands he was in weren’t fulfilling.

After releasing his previous record, 2010’s “Album,” Gertz took a summer job on a cruise ship in Hawaii. About $4,000 richer when he returned, he adopted Glass Fingers as his musical pseudonym, spent most of his money on new equipment, made a commitment to take his music more seriously and got to work on new material.

The result of his newfound sense of dedication yielded “this”, his first full-length release as Glass Fingers released in September. While some of Gertz’s older material sounds juvenile and rough, his new tracks have a polish and professional sound on par with many big label releases.

“This” is the type of record hipsters would love to know about before everybody else and name-drop at a loft party. The tracks are quirky enough to stand out as something new and catchy enough to satisfy pop fans.

Given Maine’s general lack of history with popular music, it’s fair to be skeptical about any local release — but Glass Fingers sounds nothing like the standard folk or “bar-rock” most local acts perform.

Electronic music is a difficult genre to be unique in. Many acts become victim of the pitfall of seeing how many crazy sounds they can cram into one song while ignoring structure and not giving the song a driving force or something to build up to. On “this”, it never feels like Gertz is running in place — the tracks are always going somewhere, and the destination is different for each one.

Album-opener “Stranger” starts things off on a melancholic note, but the mid-tempo track doesn’t induce sadness, but instead blankets the listener in warmth and gets them settled in for the rest of the record.

“Lose Your Mind” is the first time we get to hear Gertz’s voice, although it’s subdued. The energy-depleted singing might come off as lazy, but it’s actually one of the driving forces of the song. It’s hard to identify what sounds come from what instrument, since each song has about 20 or so instrumental tracks, but what sounds like guitar is not quite buried underneath layers of swirling synths that create a great chill-out session. It seems like that was the attempt, so a job well done here.

Perhaps the most exciting and driving track is “3:33.” If this album has a single highlight, this may be it. The record’s third track opens with an urgent riff that may be a polyphonic ringtone. A heavy synth and a driving, electronic drum kicks into the vaguely creepy verse. On first listen, it might sound slightly out of place —since it is the only one — but on repeated listens, it is a nice contrast that keeps the track interesting.

“Streetlight” — for which Gertz uploaded a music video onto YouTube — is one of the more simple-sounding pieces, but is also the most complex: there are 53 separate tracks. That includes 13 layers of vocals which, along with the other levels of reverb, makes the track sound haunted.

Other highlights include “Heartbreaker,” which, with its yelled vocals and punchy bass, is vaguely akin to early LCD Soundsystem material. “Sorry For The Mess,” on the other hand, sounds much more like The Postal Service, with its airy keyboards and subdued energy. The happiest sounding song on the record spends its first half building up and the remaining seconds fizzling into a satisfactory conclusion.

Included in the digital download, available for $5 at jessegertz.bandcamp.com, are a few bonus tracks, the best of which being a cover of The White Stripes’ hit, “Fell In Love With A Girl” which, as impossible as it seems, sounds more garagey and chaotic than the original.

Gertz has the equipment to compete with the big boys of music, and as “this” shows, he just might have the talent, too. Still, he isn’t sure how high to set his musical ambitions. Gertz wrote in a Facebook message that he is “still in the process of deciding how big I want to take this whole thing, so we’ll see.”

No matter how big he goes, let’s hope he at least keeps making stuff for us to hear.

Grade: B+

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2011, 12:40 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.