My Glass World and their new album, “Stranded Assets,” have barged into my ear-space, rather like that one uncle at a wedding who insists on telling you about his model train collection, but then, confoundingly, reveals a profound truth about the human condition just as you’re reaching for another vol-au-vent. This isn’t background music; it’s foreground chaos, beautifully arranged.
The British duo, Jamie Telford and Sean Read, wrestle with communication itself – that slippery beast, capable of forging empires of affection or digging trenches of misunderstanding. The 12 tracks here are a portfolio of such ‘stranded assets’ – thoughts and feelings that have lost their conventional value in this strange, algorithm-pocked era, yet still throb with a desperate kind of life.
The music mirrors this entirely. One moment it’s all stomping, sax-driven bravado, a declaration that reminds me, quite vividly, of the defiant clatter of a lone, forgotten harpsichord discovered playing punk anthems in an abandoned stately home. Then, it plunges into these chilling, eerie synth-scapes where you feel the walls of your own assumptions (and perhaps the room) subtly constricting.
Telford’s lyrics are sharp of tooth, the kind you want to pin to a board and connect with coloured string, tracing lines between a creative, despairing view and a stubborn sort of protest. It’s a world of characters grasping for something solid – meaning, love, a place to simply be – while buffeted by past regrets and the bewildering churn of the cost of living crisis. There’s a palpable sense of confinement, not just physical, but of the spirit, a commentary on how we invest so much in systems and ideas that then crumble like ancient biscuits left out in the existential rain.
“Stranded Assets” doesn’t offer easy answers, nor should it. It’s a splinter under the skin, this record. It provokes, it unsettles, and occasionally, it throws open a window onto a starkly beautiful, if rather dilapidated, vista of perseverance. You walk away feeling like you’ve eavesdropped on a particularly candid, slightly jarring, but ultimately vital conversation. In a world obsessed with fresh investments, what value truly endures when the market finally, inevitably, corrects itself?
