Glasnost Single – No Survivor Review
Glasnost is a Houston, Texas band that has been making a few waves with their recently released single, No Survivor. This single is the first release from their Great Divide – EP which was released this past March at SXSW. I haven’t heard the whole EP I have to admit and any other songs I’ve listened to, other than No Survivor, have been from their MySpace page so I’m really starting from a deficit. I will be looking for their album when it drops though because I would like to hear more from this four piece.
No Survivor is a slice of electro-pop that reminds me of New Order, Cut Copy or Midnight Juggernauts. It has a catchy chorus and irresistible disco beat that soon had me dancing in my chair. The vocals, distorted by a vocoder, could have been a bit more up-front in the mix but a small quibble really. As it is, the lyrics were a bit harder to understand but the songs meaning is typical relational angst – she plays games and he’s confused – and I have to wonder how important they are when this would be played in a loud dance-club anyway. This seems to be a problem with some of their other songs as well, the vocals are a little too low in the mix therefore making the lyrics harder to hear and understand. Otherwise this single is as good a synth/pop song as anything else out there and probably better than most.
The band members are listed as Brandon Duhon (Lead Vocals, Synth), Dan Le (Synth, Backing Vocals), Bryan Porter (Bass Guitar), and Paul Valdez (Percussion) and according to their press kit are multi-instrumentalists. I mention this because it gives them a versatility that is lacking in many bands. (Don’t know who the 5th guy is in the pic, he’s not listed anywhere that I could find. Sorry, anonymous band member if you are currently still with the band.)
Great Divide can be purchased at CDBaby. You can find Glasnost on Facebook, Twitter and on Blogspot as well as the aforementioned MySpace.
Tags: mp3
