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No Need To Be Lonely, the latest from Philadelphia band Gladie, is serene, but for only just a moment. For a moment it’s a swirling dream, like paper dancing in the wind, as Augusta Koch’s voice filters in all calm and measured with words that crack the surface of the heart. “Small dose of humiliation/it keeps me humble/it keeps me waiting,” she sings. And then a snap as incandescent rhythms arrive like wolves at the gate, all guitar and drums like a whirling storm, and the crack on the heart tears until it becomes an ocean.
Each minute on No Need To Be Lonely is a memory carried out on the nerves of the body, unshakable melodies that become blood in the veins. There is something about a good and perfect song that lives in your bones, as if it has become a part of you. What has long been the unshakable core of Gladie’s prowess is Koch’s indelible strength as a songwriter, a craft that has only been honed with time, creating inalienable hits that will burrow in and never leave the core of your memories.
2022’s landmark Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out was Gladie cementing their status as undeniable hit makers. With a propulsive lineup set in stone, they opted to bring in an outside voice to help carve out the form of songs they had been writing and sketching out for a follow-up – enter producer Jeff Rosenstock. Journeying out to Jack Shirley’s Atomic Garden studio in Oakland, he band was able to rely on the strength and energy of Rosenstock to help sharpen the blade on the keen edge of each track, tuning their already finely honed pop and punk sensibilities into masterworks.
No Need To Be Lonely is at its core an exploration of the balance in contrasting ideas and the beauty found in challenging times. How to find beauty growing from the soil it is not expected to seed within, how to find life in all the days you feel the weight of dying or the desire for the end. On “Brace Yourself, Koch sings, “If you have love in one hand/pain will fill the other/I know that it’s worth it/but it really makes me wonder/about every sunset I squandered” as drums and guitar conjure a sun-soaked melody, like a perfect sunset on a day that felt like it might never end. As the record nears “Fixer”, we slow down once more, find peace in staying still. A piano, played slow and careful, carries the weight. The tempo held back, letting Koch’s voice soar above all else. Her voice like a perfect photograph, beautiful and vibrant, weathered by time but made that much more potent by it, repeating a mantra “I can’t fix her/but I can fix me/if I try” like a lost step in a healing process. Later, on “I Will If You Will”, as brushes strike a snare and Koch’s guitar takes a playful twang, she sings “the devil’s not in the details/he’s just swimming in your beer/God the kind-faced diner waitress/whispering “surrender” in your ear.”
It’s easy to imagine it as a measure of sadness, but that isn’t nearly bold enough a term. Sad as a spectrum that includes beautiful and defiant ideas, sad as a bold commitment to the light of the days that follow all the hardest ones that threaten to tear it all away. Gladie never once asks us to give up on feeling afraid or broken, what they offer instead is the opportunity to grow within the cracks that form around us, and see what oceans might flow once we tear enough at our most tender ideas.
