Although she had the basic idea in place last year on her debut EP, “Apply,” Glasser — known to family and friends as Cameron Miserow — has gone a step further on her first full-length album.

Quite a large step further, in fact.

“Apply” introduced Miserow’s clattering, synth-buzzy musical vision on three songs. “Ring” (True Panther) refines it.

Working with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Miserow expanded her comparatively simple songs into lush, towering orchestrations pierced by her airy voice. The result is a hypnotic collection of songs, arranged in what the press material describes as a “chiastic” structure. In rhetoric, it’s the reversal of the order of words in the second of two parallel sentences. On “Ring,” it refers to the juxtaposition of songs representing contradictory emotional states.

So that’s there if you want it. Even if you don’t, though, there’s plenty to keep you riveted: polyrhythmic percussion, atmospheric synthesizers and pillowy layers of vocals treated with just enough reverb to make them sound epic.

Actually, they are epic. Miserow’s voice is supple and sinewy as she winds it through opener “Apply” (repurposed and enlivened from the EP), backed by marching-band rototoms and imposing electronic tracks. Wordless ocal interjections pop like flashbulbs over her sweeping melody on “Tremel,” and a busy xylophone sidles back and forth beneath Miserow’s hopeful, double-tracked vocals on “Treasure of We.”

Though her lyrics describe in oblique ways her emotional state, the sound of the songs does it just as well, and in the end, the juxtaposition on “Ring” is less about chiasmus than it is about creating a single riveting, trance-like state.

— Eric R. Danton

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September 28, 2010 at 12:49 pm | Share |