8.6

Go Cozy: Glaziao

Music Reviews
Go Cozy: Glaziao

On the day Babe City Records dropped Glaziao (glaj-ee-ao), Jon Weiss, one of the label founders, urged everyone to “Go outside and skateboard to this album…let the wind flow trough your hair and realize that sometimes everything is okay, even if just for a second.” With their new release, D.C. outfit Go Cozy actually set the bar very high for albums that leave you inclined to indulge in life’s beauties. So it’s only fitting that in Puerto Rico, where lead vocalist/guitarist Homero Salazar Andrujovich spent his childhood, the word “glaziao” is used to describe perfect surfing conditions. Glaziao is a poised album that puts as much emphasis on creating space to breathe as it does being physical.

Airy guitar leads twist along with the melody on the opener “Mind Ruins”, a re-recording of a song on their 2014 EP Bruises. Lyrically, Andrujovich drones “how’s a man to see himself with venom eyes?” and dabbles in a tasteful self-loathing that actually feels more introspective than anything else. The use of so few words while maintaining tonal density sets the precedent for Go Cozy as a band who can balance space with an appetite for kineticism. They expand on that train of thought with the powerful instrumentals coming out of the band’s rhythm section (who, it should be noted, are just generally precise) on the wishful “Our Best Reflections” where vocalist Homero Salazar ruminates on the power of a mutually damaging and inconsistent type of love.

As quickly as Go Cozy find a rhythm with easy going guitar jams like “Silverlining” and “Without You Around”, they regularly tap into what’s probably the coolest thing about the album: how it doesn’t shy away from shaking things up and letting the sound branch out a little bit. At points, they’re hiccuping through a really jovial sort of Tom Tom Club-era brand pop on the song “Body Boarding”, but on the penultimate cut “Imperial Chai” they’re doing some really detached new wave and trying something new for themselves. The band can play with the sound so well, that managing an aesthetic vision, but making songs that don’t exactly sound like they have to be on an album together with one another is something that sounds natural for them; which is only a testament to the serious merits of each cut.

At times, you’ll see them doing something riffy, albeit tastefully riffy, like on the back end of the chief banger “Sage Along My Way.” The guitar smooths over this melody that sits really awkwardly, but up against the bass, is actually locking in one of the most infectious grooves on the record.

There’s a limbic resonance to the way that Andrujovich and keyboardist Maria Sage trade poetics on this song. Each word and bit of melody is reflected off the last in way that, as they go back and forth, satiates the phrase that came before it, ensuring each one is powerful. The lyrics themselves are open to any amount of interpretation. Salazar sings, “It’s not only a sentiment of life, your love / In between your eyes a lighting storm of joy”, Sage comes in over a wall of shimmering synth, and sings back “You came through the free years to sleep in my heart / You changed the madness for pacific flows.” Open to interpretation, yes, though sung as to ensure all interpretations don’t forgo massive quantities of bliss or honesty…sung as if the sensations that accompany love’s revelations are tantamount to those things.

It’s cool to listen to a project that isn’t fixing its gaze on too much other than creating something that’s pretty nuanced structurally, but able to be appreciated and processed on a song-to-song level, rather than for its adhesion to some objective standard for a sound that a band has. There’s a kind of freedom to Glaziao, it’s that freedom that makes it physical and gives it a real type of soul. They keep their sound humble, but low-key flex in ways that are challenging and thoughtful. Bands that can do this, bands like Go Cozy, never sound corny, because they never give into the corny assumption that you have to milk one thing rather than test yourself with a myriad of sounds. Embracing a different point of view can be liberating, and they prove that with an album where each song genuinely a stand-out. Each track has it’s own thing going for it, so it’s impossible to understate the coolness or importance of that musical mindset.

You can grab a copy of the record here

Go Cozy Tour Dates:

4/11 – GREENSBORO, NC @ Urban Grinders w/ Domestic Heathen & Simon Mantooth

4/12 – ATLANTA, GA @ The Cleaners w/ Shampoo, Pretty Boy & Clothes

4/13 – KNOXVILLE, TN @ The Pilot Light w/ The New Romantics

4/14 – BLACKSBURG, VA @ Gillie’s w/ Emperor X & Porcelain

4/15 – ATHENS, OH @ The Bat Lounge w/ Generifus, Good English & mosquito coast

4/16 – BLOOMINGTON, IN @ Drew’s Place w/ Daguerreotype, Plateau Below & Champs-Elysées

4/17 – DAY OFF BABY

4/18 – CINCINNATI, OH @ The Comet

4/19 – CHICAGO, IL @ The Empty Bottle w/ Sexy Fights, Bunny, The Sooper Swag Project

4/20 – PHILADELPHIA, PA @ Goldilocks Gallery w/ Cool Dad & Bilge Rat

4/21 – NEW YORK, NY @ PIANOS w/ Holy Tunics, Dudelomons & Sam Seeger

4/22 – SOUTHINGTON, CT @ STUDIO ONE w/ Dr. Martino, Worn Leather, Hellrazor & Lea

4/23 – HADLEY, MA @ TUBECATS w/ Skinny Pigeons, Roz and the Ricecakes, DeGreaser &
WYDYDE
4/24 – MONTCLAIR, NJ @ TBA (help?) w/ BOOSEGUMPS, Eagle Daddy & Stick Bug

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