Glam rock was often a much maligned form, being seen, perhaps for good reason, as being a bit frivolous, throwaway, and musically bereft. Now, I’m not saying that “Hermit,” the new one from A Beech Landing, is a glam rock song, like all good music things are not as simple as that, but it does feel a bit like one, albeit one that grew up, went to music college, shared a room with shoegaze, and is still having acid flashbacks and trippy recollections from those days.
Glam rock? No. Glam-adjacent? Perhaps.
So, if it isn’t as simple as that, what is going on here? Well, despite an opening riff that Joan Jett would have wrestled you bodily to the ground to get her hands on, it is what is found threaded through this staccato groove that makes the song so compelling.
The same hazy, cosmic cadence that Tame Impala put to such good use provides much of the song’s sonic vibe, but with occasional and disarmingly echoes of a more street-wise take on ABBA’s melodic brilliance, the harmonic richness of the Bee Gees if they were a sixties garage psych-rock band, and the raw energy of a wonky strain of modern alt rock chime throughout.
It is a combination that should not work on paper, yet somehow feels completely natural, not only natural but compelling as we follow the music through unexpected twists, sonic cul-de-sacs, and surprising turns.
Part of A Beech Landing’s beauty lies in a sense of necessity; the mother, as we know, of invention. Budgetary constraints meant that the music was recorded, mixed, and mastered using equipment equivalent to technology scavenged from a recording studio dumpster, rather than manufactured in-house. Yet those limitations become the music’s strengths. The rough edges, analog warmth, and the necessary imperfections that set analog music apart from its sanitized digital sibling give it a sense of authenticity, honesty… reality.
And given that the song is the story of someone who, despite feeling connected to the real world, is actually hiding under a false digital image, thinking that he is popular and important and original, and yet, underneath this binary veneer is a lost and lonely man who exists only via a computer connection, such musical raw authenticity is perfect.
