The Glad Version

Sometimes bands surprise you. Two albums into their career on the local scene I thought I had the Glad Version all figured out. I had the quartet pegged as a group of talented and well meaning young guys whose music played it a little too safe and teetered a little too close for comfort to mawkishly emo terrain for me to ever really get behind. Then I heard their forthcoming third album, Make Islands, and that perception was blown to pieces. It’s a truly great record, a focused and polished pop platter that expands the Glad Version sound way beyond anything they’ve done in the past, the kind of album that screams to be discovered far beyond the state of Minnesota.

“With this record I think we got a little bit better at channeling our ideas, better at songwriting,” explains front man Adam Svec when asked for his thoughts on what I perceived as the Glad Version’s great leap forward. “I think just getting older helps, having a little more perspective, listening to more records. The records I listened to and was influenced by at age 22 are a lot different than what I’m listening to now at 27. The experiences I have had in terms of friendships and romantic relationships during that time, it all ends up impacting the songwriting.”

Svec’s words ring true when listening to Make Islands, an expansive and mature outing that feels like the Glad Version’s Transatlanticism moment (this comparison also bubbles to the surface fast because Svec’s clear as a bell boyish quaver sounds like a dead ringer for Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard with some frequency). There’s menacing high drama rock (“Deadwood”), angst ridden jangle-pop (“Ambulance”) and artful midtempo relationship anxiety examinations (“Cougars”) - and that’s just the first three tracks. Coming in at a whopping 15 songs the most impressive feat the band pulls off is lack of filler and their willingness to try out new styles (a banjo led sojourn here, a violin and acoustic guitar campfire tune there) keeps things interesting for the duration. As Svec explained, they had more than enough material to work with at the outset.

From L to R: Adam Svec, Travis Welk, Tor Johnson, Chris Salter

Lonesomeness is definitely the dominant emotion at play as Svec dissects a relationship based mostly around absence, distance and doubt (“Someday we’ll be happy. I could promise you. But all these words are lies.”), but room is also left for some caustically funny self-reflection on the “local scene” in cuts like “89.3” (“I’m backstage with my hookers and blow when I stabbed a guy for not liking the show.”). It’s an intensely personal album that manages to sound soul-baring without actually dwelling in too much specific narrative detail, there’s a story here, but Svec’s more than content to let the listener fill in their own specifics. “Trying to write a linear specific story in a song is one of the most difficult things to do without it coming off like a bedtime story or some weird pompous thing,” claims Svec. “I got better at songwriting when I started taking bits and pieces of the ideas or feelings in a story and rather than focusing on details focused on phrasing. I try to make the language hit as hard as possible. I want to make a complete thought without being too specific about what I’m telling the listener.”

Make Islands

“I have always loved the Minneapolis music scene and I love Minneapolis songwriters,” says Svec. “I’m writing songs that I want my roommates to like, they’re sort of my primary target audience, them and other local musicians. I want Darren Jackson [from Kid Dakota] to like these new songs. I want John Solomon [from Friends Like These] to like these songs. Obviously I take a lot of cues from local artists. I really love that we have so many strong writers in the Twin Cities. I think it comes from a couple of things as I’ve thought about it a lot. For one, Minneapolis is pretty far from a lot of other towns, the closest city bigger than Minneapolis is Chicago and that’s not that close. Also, the colder your town is the more time that people have to sit in their room and play guitar and figure out what it is that their pissed about. There’s something about a long winter that really fosters that. The fact that you have a lot of great bands in town makes other great bands. Because if you’re in a band and go see a show by a songwriter like Haley Bonar, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I shouldn’t even be playing shows unless I can get near that level of quality.’”