Six years in the making, Buddy Glass’ sophomore album bursts with enough narrative and sonic sensitivity to fill stadiums.
For six long years, we have been impatiently waiting for Buddy Glass to release his next album. The time has finally come and trust us when we say that it was worth the wait. Bursting with heart and choruses that could ignite any venue, Wow & Flutter is a cinematic level of storytelling woven through acoustic melodies.
This is just the core of the record, however. From here, the artist traces his narrative journey through folk, alt-rock, and Australiana: a tribute to the artist’s versatility and sonic command.
Buddy Glass has a pretty incredible story, one that certainly reflects through his music. Moving to Australia from Chile during a 1976 military-imposed curfew, the artist lived in the same Villawood Migrant Hostel as the Youngs and the Vandas, prior to their AC/DC and Easybeats days. During school, the artist went on to form Peabody, cutting his teeth on iconic stages around Australia. You could easily see Wow & Flutter as a catalyst within his career, reflecting back on where he has been and is yet to go.
Opening with Promised Shoreline, the record’s first track is your traditional Australiana folk ballad. It is an opus of sonic narrative and storytelling, capturing an image as vivid as one taken on a camera. The single has a Paul Kelly-esque quality to it, glistening through raw, acoustic chords.
The album’s second track, The Spirit of a Small Town, continues these stylings but brings more tempo to the collection. We expect to be in for 34-minutes of authentic, outback storytelling, laced in skeletal guitar melodies: the Australiana special. That’s until The Bird creeps. There’s something dark and bloodthirsty about this track. It feels like a haunting summer’s night, where the air is thick and reality is fleeting. Drifting backing vocals and electronic drones all lead to this brooding atmosphere, one where nothing is as it seems.
Wasted Habit pierces through this nocturnal fog with sheer energy. Boasting a hard metal vocal quality and gradual bites of distortion and electric, the single shifts the acoustic into new territories. In You Sail Out (ft. Rhiannon Beck) and No One Can Tell You You’re Wrong then return to the grains of the record’s opening; bursting with soft, lush chords.
“There’s the more traditional singer-songwriter style of the first couple of tracks, Promised Shoreline – a story about a couple whose faith is tested in life and death, and The Spirit of a Small Town – a true account of the dark goings-on of my mother’s family and her birthplace in the south of Chile,” the artist explains. “But then the album settles into its second phase. The hypnotic, trance-inducing repetition of The Bird, If You Sail Out, Wasted Habit and Yuppie, Junkie, Athlete.”
Yuppie, Junkie, Athlete erupts with a Radiohead-esque drone, ushering the record into alt-rock territory. Angst-laden and heavy, it is a song that holds weight through its grandeur.
Ending with the massive, six-minute outro The Only, the album comes full circle. It is the raw Australiana of Promised Shoreline but painted onto a complete canvas. Skeletal chords are traded for lush, billowing choruses, and the artist’s lyricism cuts deeper than ever before.
“The album closes with The Only – an epic checklist of modern malaises, combining the album’s two worlds into six minutes of ’60s singer-songwriter-inspired folk-drone,” the artist recalls.
Rich and detailed Wow & Flutter is an album like we’ve never seen before. Prepare to dive into 30-minutes of unparalleled storytelling and sonic expression.
Check out the record below:
