Wow & Flutter by Buddy Glass

"… it’s a shifting, almost kaleidoscopic showcase of Glass’ talent and musicianship, and deserves to be remembered as not just one of the year’s best records, but one of the finest collections to come out of Australia in recent times." ★★★★
Tyler Jenke - Rolling Stone AU

"Bursting with heart and choruses that could ignite any venue, Wow & Flutter is a cinematic level of storytelling woven through acoustic melodies."
Emily Elvish - Happy Mag

"`Wow & Flutter' is an absolute delight: an immersive journey into the poetic and expressive world of Buddy Glass" 8.5/10
Arun Kendall - Backseat Mafia

"If he lived in the Pacific Northwest, Pitchfork would have already deified him".
Nathan Jolly - The Guardian

BUDDY GLASS - WOW & FLUTTER - BIO

Me

Hi. My name is Buddy Glass. I was born in Chile in 1976 during a military-imposed curfew. I arrived with my family in Sydney, Australia in January 1983 and lived in the same Villawood Migrant Hostel where the Young & Vanda families lived before forming The Easybeats & AC/DC. It was stinking hot, humid and weird. Bob Hawke was about to win his first federal election and the mighty Parramatta Eels were on the way to their third consecutive premiership. I didn’t speak a word of English and I was scared.

In school I started a band with my friend Ben and we called it Peabody. We’ve made 5 albums over the last 26 years, played the Big Day Out a couple of times and got to go on tour around Australia and overseas. We’re still together; just a little slower, dimmer.

I released my debut solo album, Buddy Glass in 2014 on fantastic local label, China Pig Records. I wrote it in France over the course of a year and played heaps of shows over there, here in Australia and even one of the last shows at legendary New York venue, Cake Shop before it closed down. I got to play with The Stranglers, Kristin Hersh and Ocean Colour Scene as well as heaps of my favourite local ratbags like Ben Salter and Jamie Hutchings. I once supported Mexrissey - a Mexican mariachi band doing The Smiths songs in Spanish. Weird.

The album 

Wow & Flutter was recorded by me in the back room of my house in Marrickville, on a TASCAM 4-track cassette recorder, in between dogs barking and babies crying. I had to buy cassettes online from Melbourne and bought and sold several 4-track machines until I found the right one. Tim Kevin, who recorded and mixed the first album, recorded a few extra bits and pieces and mixed it. The finished album is eight songs with a couple of different vibes.

There’s the more traditional singer-songwriter style of the first couple of tracks, Promised Shoreline - a story about a couple whose faith is tested in life and death, and The Spirit of a Small Town - a true account of the dark goings-on of my mother’s family and her birthplace in the south of Chile. But then the album settles into its second phase. The hypnotic, trance-inducing repetition of The Bird, If You Sail Out, Wasted Habit and Yuppie, Junkie, Athlete. The album closes with The Only - an epic checklist of modern malaises, combining the album’s two worlds into six minutes of 60s singer-songwriter-inspired folk-drone. Yeah, I know.

I hope you like Wow & Flutter. It took me a while but I think it’s worth it.
x
BG

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