Athens, Georgia's best-kept secret: The Glands built brit-pop-tinged indie rock that NPR called one of the best indie-rock records ever made.
MOODS · moody · laid-back · brit-pop tinged · disaffected · understated · cool · melancholic · indie rock · introspective
BIOGRAPHY
The Glands were an American indie rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed around guitarist/singer/songwriter Ross Shapiro and drummer Joe Rowe, later rounded out by Craig McQuiston, Frank McDonald, and Doug Stanley. Their sound leaned into a darker, laid-back brit-pop style, drawing on the Kinks, the Who, and the Rolling Stones while running parallel to Athens' Elephant 6 scene and the disaffected cool of Yo La Tengo.
The band self-released Double Thriller in 1996 (reissued by Bar/None in 1998), followed by a self-titled album in 2000 on Capricorn Records, reissued in 2001. After Ross Shapiro's death from lung cancer in March 2016, Double Coda, assembled from decades of his demos, was completed by Joe Rowe, Derek Almstead, and producer David Barbe, and released on New West Records in 2018.
WHY THEY'RE COOL
NPR Music called The Glands' self-titled album 'one of the best indie-rock records ever made,' and the Los Angeles Times argued that in a just world they'd have been adored well beyond the Athens scene that nurtured them. James Mercer of The Shins went so far as to say no movie about 2000s band life could be made without their music on the soundtrack. Existing alongside Elephant 6's psychedelia but channeling something closer to Yo La Tengo's moody restraint, The Glands crafted a quietly devastating catalog capped by Double Coda, a posthumous record completed after Ross Shapiro's death that stands as a fitting final statement.
