An invitation to celebrate with us, a story, some thoughts

Glutenhead's big moment on January 9

FIRST THING’S FIRST

We are hosting a celebration, a listening party, for our long-awaited debut album called There’s A Crack In Everything on January 9th at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto.

This will be the ONLY CHANCE to hear the album, it’s not going to be released publicly on streaming and all that for at least a while (or…. ever…. maybe….?).

If you’ve ever enjoyed any of glutenhead’s music, shows, videos, etc, or if you haven’t but have been curious, or if you haven’t been curious but might be now, this is the culmination of everything we’ve done. This is the distilled and purified GLUTENHEAD presentation.

At the event, everyone will get a link to download or listen to the album, but that will be the only way to hear it outside of this event.

More info soon on collaborations (visual, etc.)

LINK TO PURCHASE TICKETS

I’m so thankful to our beautiful friend Sonja Katanic for designing this poster which so vivaciously captures the energy and feeling that we were trying to get across with this album. A kindred soul!!

SOME THOUGHTS

A little over a year ago, already over 3 years into the process of making Glutenhead’s first album, I started to feel kinda burnt out on the whole thing. I had changed a lot in that time, the rest of the band members had changed a lot, the world had changed a lot.

I had grown tired of that tugging feeling saying “the music has to be accessible the music has to be marketable the music has to be promoted and should grab people and should blablabalbabla” (even if I often ignored the feeling). So I said to myself (and to the band, many times in various way) “fuck it, I reject the idea that the only art worth making is that which is immediately successful or attention grabbing, let’s resist this and just make what we want.”

So then we started building this monolith, this big and bold and (overly) ambitious album that I felt we had it in us to make but never had the time or money or courage.

In the emotional storms of my pre-teen life, I was really drawn to music with sprawling anthemic bursts of passion. Those long ass songs that somehow you know all the words to, that are so melodramatic and glossed with cliche but still (secretly) make you feel connected to them (there are decades of examples, Bruce Springsteen and Queen up to MCR and Green Day)

But though there’s a magic in the grandiose, hyper-sincere, theatrical melodrama of this stuff, it’s also frequently very on-the-nose and polished in a way that is not very glutenhead. A lot of this record was us trying to simmer down the essential beauty of those pop-rock anthems and tastefully cook it into our strange and goofy brand of art rock or whatever you wanna call what it is we do.

The development of the record was so long, too, and so our approach evolved and changed and grew to incorporate whatever felt alive in each moment we worked on it. You track the archeology of this process, of its history. You can hear us growing up, our taste changing, our skills and voices blossoming. We’re pulling from, variously, traditional country & bluegrass, sleazy Vegas EDM, mid-2000s indie rock and pop-punk, hyperpop, post punk and goth, psych rock and metal, early emo, etc etc etc.

This whole thing really helped me personal fall back in love with making music. My relationship with music and art bloomed the more I understood that playing/making/sharing it with others doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with "getting big" or anything. And actually all that promo stuff, social media, marketing, etc. was really getting in the way of making genuine connections and not to mention also getting in the way of the music becoming what it could be, what it was yearning to be.

There was that point a while ago when I started to feel a bit crispy about this whole project. I thought “why does Glutenhead exist and why are we making this record?” Well, the answer was because we know we can, it wants to be made, it’s fun as fuck, and we want to share it with others. So to satisfy any of those, does we need some huge distribution with spotify monthly listeners and all that? No, we just need to make it, and have a night where we can share it with other people (who want to hear it), and all listen together and experience it together. That became the goal of the whole thing, to make it and to be able to share it, in real time, with people who care!!!

This event is the result of that goal, January 9th. This is the big night! What we worked for 4 years on, in 6 different studios, with tons of brilliant collaborators.

We still don’t know what’s gonna happen with the album after this, but it’s not gonna come out publicly for at least a while. It would be great to try and find a label to help us put it out, to get some physical copies made, have a little meat behind the promo, etc. If you know anyone that might be connected to a label, or anything like that, invite them!! Pls!!!! Invite your friends if they like music and may want something unique to do on a Thursday night.

I very much hope you can come listen with us. We put everything into this and I can confidently say I’ve never heard anything like it.

BIG LOVE FOREVER <3

GLUTENHEAD FOREVER <3