There was a brief period of time where Glasvegas were technically an indie band, releasing scrappy little 7" singles and getting praise for their demos, but they never had much interest in acting or sounding like one. Their skyscraping, Rich Costey-produced debut from 2008 was proof enough of that, and now their second album, EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \, removes all doubts as to whether they'd ever look back. The title alone promises a thrill ride spanning the poles of human emotion, rendered in all caps as if to say, "your feelings must be this tall to ride." Problem is, that sort of heavy-handedness is indicative of their operation in all other aspects, and with every second attempting to be the most cathartic, EUPHORIC simply numbs you with 50 minutes of novocaine for the soul.
Glasvegas started out applying principles of Spector's Wall of Sound, but on EUPHORIC, they mostly do away with the pop and fill the void with bombast. The resulting sound forfeits empathy and intimacy and makes the listener feel like just another chump in the cheap seats. If you've got a taste for messianic flag-waving, EUPHORIC can pack an intermittent, fleeting buzz, but they're ultimately harshed by Glasvegas' soggy musicianship: Frothy with echo, guitars well and crest, synthesizers ooze gelatin, and the rhythm section doesn't make any sudden movements. And it's all captured with monolithic monotony by Flood who, fresh off his vibrant production of Pains of Being Pure at Heart's Belong, wasn't challenged to deliver anything but the banal reverb-crank bands lean on to conjure the sound of ambition where none really exists.
In the past, Glasvegas benefited from the "write what you know" topicality on career highlights "Daddy's Gone", "Stabbed", and "Flowers and Football Tops", but here James Allan tries to feel everyone's pain and delivers the sort of pat universality you'd expect from songs with names like "You", "Change", and "Shine Like Stars". Camped out in a Santa Monica beach house and inspired by a viewing of Thelma & Louise (dead serious), Allan penned the vaguely lesbian soap opera "Whatever Hurts You Through the Night" but even without that origin story, it's easy enough to chuckle at the lyrics that read like cheesecake video narration ("I see you in the night walking past my house/ I wonder if you feel the same as I do").
Homosexuality is also a theme on "I Feel Wrong" and "Stronger Than Dirt", so credit Allan for at least being conceptually risky in a milieu often attributed to laddish behavior. But despite good intentions, the wincing lyrics border on pandering and even exploitative, revealing little in the way of insight or palpable compassion. And that's where EUPHORIC falls flat as a whole: Everything is supposedly belted out on the behalf of you, the listener, but whether suicidal or irrepressibly hopeful, gay or straight, imagined or real, you're simply a 2-D pawn in Glasvegas' game of high-stakes emoting.
