To their fans, Virginia's Engine Down were a rock band, a post-hardcore band, an anthemic indie band-- anything but an emo band. And it's true that a minor-key, Dischord-inspired edge balanced out their emotional evangelism. Nevertheless, in almost every Engine Down song, there came a point when Keeley Davis would launch into a rafter-shaking blare that was related to the guitars churning below it only by key. At these moments, you had to contend with the uncomfortable realization that you were listening to emo-- nth wave, suburban, mall-friendly emo.
No one knows how Denali fans regarded Denali, because no one has ever met one. This isn't meant to be as snarky as it sounds-- in fact, Denali were pretty good. Maura Davis' pipes were even more imposing than her brother's (one imagines Richmond homeowners taping up their windows against high-decibel shattering when the Davis family went Christmas caroling), and Denali had a more nuanced style than Engine Down-- slinky and glacial, it was a sort of electrified lounge-noir. But Denali were that archetypal band that lacked memorable songwriting to bolster their cool sound. They were easy to like, but too compositionally effaced to love.
After the demise of both bands, the Davis siblings reunited (with talented Engine Down drummer Cornbread Compton) as the power trio Glös, and their debut scans as a mature corrective to their juvenile excesses. This would explain any number of decisions on Harmonium that would seem to play against their established strengths. If you've spent your musical career recording vocals that absolutely crush everything else in the mix, then on your mature album, you might decide to filter them so heavily that they sound recorded via long-distance call. If both of your singers are known for scenery-chewing crescendos, then you might keep them low in the mix, seldom breaking free from their dusky minuet. And if you're smart, then you might retain the more winning characteristics of each band-- in this case, Engine Down's syncopated thrust and Denali's stripped-down smolder-- to create lean, sinewy dirge-pop of unexpected sophistication.
If this approach sounds formulaic, it can be, and some songs on Harmonium seem to overcompensate for their creators' prior intemperance. These suffer from the Denali-syndrome: They sound good, but are difficult to distinguish from one another. The album opens with "Unharmed"-- a reversed guitar figure launches a gritty, minor-key scrape contrasted by floating trebles, then collapses into a slashing grind that's somehow heavy and buoyant at once. The sound is enticing and specific to Glös, but plays out predictably over the next few tracks, which, while pinioned by crisp dynamic shifts, run together in a shadowy, glittering blur.
This isn't true of the album's midsection, which profits greatly from a bit of stylistic variation. "Telepathy" uses a runaway jangle, elastic bass, and damaged guitar flourishes to drive home its potent vocal line, and "Tainted" is an album-stealing standout that crackles like a live wire, mostly because the Davis siblings capitalize upon the harmonic possibilities of their dual vocal prowess rather than tip-toeing around them. Singing two different vocal lines that tangle and then surge together amid thunderous percussion, their new sound comes into full flower, and the slight vocoder accents on Keeley's voice are surprisingly effective. Glös is already a more captivating idea than Engine Down or Denali, and they should only improve as they put more distance between themselves and those towering shadows.
