Chicago rocker Joe Glass first caught my attention with his criminally overlooked 2022 debut, Slither. Glass stitched together its scrappy, laid-back songs with sure-handed precision, and his talents impressed Lifeguard guitarist-vocalist Kai Slater enough to recruit Glass to play bass in the live version of Slater’s Sharp Pins project. Glass sounds like a seasoned pro on Snakewards, his new second album, which he’s self-releasing on January 3. He brings a virtuoso’s touch to the sweet hooks of his scuffed-up indie rock, and he balances his confidence and focus against a slight looseness and a slacker charm—he sounds like he’s on the final lap of his third set at a 4 AM corner bar. When Glass finds the exact right ratio of those two factors—his professional skill set and his boisterous, unbuttoned energy—he creates the kind of combustible tension you can hear on the engine-revving “Tied Tight.” On the bruised-sounding “Man Who Lost His Diamond,” he sings about losing himself down an unnamed backcountry road, driven by a muddy but mobile bass line and relentless drumming. His lo-fi guitars whip around like a tattered flag flying from the cab of a pickup truck, and his woebegone vocals are tinged with hope, as if he believes his self-inflicted banishment might save him. Glass plays rock ’n’ roll like it’s the only thing that matters, even (or especially) when it sounds like a rickety lean-to that could collapse on his head. This idealism helps make Snakewards a very early candidate for my list of the year’s best Chicago albums.
Joe Glass Feller and Receiver open. Sat 1/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $16.17, 21+
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Leor Galil (he/him) started writing for the Chicago Reader in 2010. He joined the staff in 2012 and became a senior staff writer in 2020.
Galil mainly covers music, with a singular focus on Chicago artists, scenes, and phenomena.
He’s won a handful of journalism awards; he’s won two first-place awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (for music writing in 2020 and arts feature in 2022) and a Peter Lisagor award (for Best Arts Reporting and Criticism in 2022).
Galil lives in Chicago. He speaks English and can be contacted at lgalil@chicagoreader.com.