Music | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
| Glambat Photo. |
Nineties punk rock meets dream pop with Glambat and Snowpiler’s split album I Feel God In This Chili’s Tonight. Released last month, the seven-track album has three songs by Nick Restivo of Snowpiler and four by Emily Rose Alderman of Glambat. Although it was released this year, Alderman said several of the songs were written years ago and have been looking for a home.
“It’s a form of communication where you don’t have to say what you really mean.” she said in a recent interview. “It’s like a diary entry that you’re writing at like 2 a.m. at a diner in Connecticut valley."
Although she was exposed to music at a young age, Alderman didn’t start seriously writing music until she was in college. It was there that she began using it as an outlet to express herself, and to express the things she was experiencing that she felt needed to be kept secret.
On the album, Glambat’s songs have a similar sound to the alternative rock band The Cranberries, with the feminist message of punk band Bikini Kill. “Too articulate/I didn’t write this song to send you a message of any kind," begins the first track, titled “Brasil.”
Glambat keeps her listener at arm's length, unspooling the reasons she doesn't really need them after all. "I'm the best boyfriend/I'm my own boyfriend," she croons at the end, drenching the words in reverb.
The album is full of references, some laced with pop culture and others buried in the songs themselves. The title, “I Feel God In This Chili’s Tonight,” is a nod to the popular television show "The Office" (the seventh and final track “Andy" is titled after the show's character Andy Bernard). In the episode, Pam Beesly has won an award for whitest sneakers in the office, and gives an acceptance speech thanking God— in the middle of a Chili's restaurant.
Alderman is a fan of the show, and found the character's speech particularly funny and quirky when she first heard it. At the time, she got on the phone with Restivo to tell him she'd found the name of the album. The rest of their collaboration was history.
In between Glambat's high-powered, propulsive pieces, Snowpiler slows it down. The two bands have an underground feel to them, and it’s like the sounds from the past are coming back. With both grungy, Nirvana-esque moments and Liz Phair’s “girly sound,” the album has the feel of a DIY band playing at open mic night at your local venue. Which fits—Glambat performed recently at Cafe Nine, and earlier this month at Hartford's Slum House.
Throughout the album, the listener gets to dig into what it means to look for, rebuff, and spring back from love—and lean on one's own resiliency. The idea of not needing love appears in “Brasil,” only to return a few tracks later. In “Cole Gate,” the beginning tells a story about a love that didn’t quite work out. But Alderman explained that the songs aren't meant to be tied to a single theme, either—they're meant to preach a message of "self-respect" above all else.
The album isn't Glambat's only recent project. Currently, Alderman is working on a full-length album with drummer Sam Carlson and bassist Jack Walsh, with sounds recorded by Pat Dalton. Snowpiler, meanwhile, records its music in Branford with James Palko.
For Alderman, recording the album has allowed her to travel and meet new people. She said she is doing things that she wouldn’t normally do. Really getting into music and “participating in the subculture is something that can be healthy,” she said.
“You could travel and see a friend of a friend of a friend who you can go to a rock show with,” she added.
This piece comes to the Arts Paper through the second annual Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI), a program of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and the New Haven Free Public Library. From April through June, ten New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students work with Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman and YAJI Program Assistant Melanie Espinal to produce four articles, for each of which they are compensated. Read more about the program here or by checking out the "YAJI" tag.