CD of The Week

Gladie - Don' Know What You're In Until You're Out (Plum)

In 2019 we said goodbye to Cayetana, one of Y-Not’s all-time fave local Philly bands. The trio of friends each set out on their own musical paths, with singer/guitarist Augusta Koch starting a new band along with her partner Matt Schimelfenig of Three Man Cannon. Weeks before the official beginning of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, Gladie released their debut album Safe Sins. Unable to fully promote it at the time, Gladie still kept busy throughout the early years of the pandemic, releasing EPs and singles on a regular basis for Bandcamp Days. With the release of their second full album, Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, Gladie are ready to re-introduce themselves to the world.

In an interview with Stereogum, Koch discussed how the new songs were inspired by her recent sobriety, along with her mental well-being and anxiety during the early pandemic days, as well as her relationship and recent engagement to Schimelfenig.

Koch and Schimelfenig are now backed up by Pat Conaboy on guitar, Dennis Mishko on bass and Miles Ziskind on drums and you can tell how much fuller their sound is from the get-go. Following the brief, ethereal intro track “Purple Year,” Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out kicks down the door with “Born Yesterday.” Full of pop-punk power chords, it’s an anthem of rebirth as Koch sings, “I’m a little unsteady / I was born yesterday / I forgot I could be somebody / Now the floodgates are open.”

The swinging “Hit the Ground Running,” with its surprise horn section, shows that Gladie can switch up their sound beyond distorted indie rock. Hooky lead single “Nothing” asks in this world of endless consumption, “what would it feel like to want nothing? “Soda” is a cozy, grateful relationship song: “You make me feel normal / Make me feel like I belong.”

Schimelfenig takes the lead vocal on “Fixer,” a woozy Kurt Vile-ish snapshot of the day after a couple’s quarrel. Elsewhere, the slow burn “Smoking” captures Koch’s feelings about losing her world around her while getting sober in the solitude of the pandemic. “Standing on the precipice of the way things are and the parts I miss / Experience the moment that I'm in / Embarrassed to admit that I miss smoking / Breathing in solitude with strangers.”

Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out is reminiscent of Best Coast’s last album, Always Tomorrow, also an album about rediscovering yourself with clarity and surrounded by guitar riffs, but swapping Philadelphia grittiness for the warm California sun.

Gladie have multiple hometown gigs on the horizon, opening for their friend Laura Jane Grace at the Ardmore Music Hall on November 29th and playing on a sold-out bill with Jeff Rosenstock and Lauren Stephenson at the First Unitarian Church on December 17th.
Review by Joey O.