This Poor Publicity Team...

Throughout the years I wrote music reviews for dailyvault.com, I would receive promo CDs with a promo kit. I sincerely wish I had saved every promo kit I received as I read some whoppers. Some promo kits were structured well, tracing through a band's history to provide context for the enclosed CD, while other promo kits were so brief, there was no structure, meaning there would be a piece of paper that had a couple of sentences along the lines of "Enclosed is a CD. Hope you like it. Thanks." I admit those brief promo kits achieved their purpose and didn't need to say a lot more than that because, frankly, the enclosed CD was the resume and the promo kit was the cover letter telling me to evaluate the resume.

My point is that I would sometimes get promo kits for a band that felt like it was a resume for a high school kid who hasn't done anything! One promo kit once cited a long list of bands that the members of the current band had been a member of ... none of them ever playing outside of their city. For example, if I was promoting a band that had ex-members of Shotgun, Iowa Beef Experience, Horny Genius, Sludgeplow, and Critical Gopher, would you know any of those bands? I doubt it, but man, that promo kit acted as if I should know all of those bands and that by a former member of those bands, I should give this new band accolades. Yeah, whatever.

All that said, I truly feel sorry for New West Records, who sent me the following email. The Glands released 2 records that are out-of-print. The frontman for the group died in 2016 so they are releasing 23 tracks that use recordings he made over 20 years and the remaining members of the band did a lot of research to find the 23 tracks. All of that is said more beautifully than I just summarized it below. Will the Glands are going to become my next Bayside / Count the Stars / Bigwig / Spitalfield - all bands I discovered and adore thanks to promo kits like the one below? Time will tell.

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ATHENS, GA CULT LEGENDS THE GLANDS’ TWO-DECADES-IN-THE-MAKING THIRD RECORD DOUBLE CODA TO BE RELEASED VIA NEW WEST RECORDS ON NOVEMBER 9th, 2018 

THE BAND’S COMPLETE CATALOG TO BE REISSUED AS STANDALONE TITLES AND COMPILED IN THE LIMITED-EDITION I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE BOX SET 

NPR MUSIC PREMIERES UNHEARD SONGS “SO HIGH” AND “ELECTRICITY” TODAY 

"...Do whatever you can to hear these records — they're ripe for re-discovery." - NPR Music

“You couldn’t make a movie about band life in the 2000’s without The Glands all over the soundtrack.”  - James Mercer of The Shins

“That self-titled second Glands album was my soundtrack for 2000 … and truly one of my favorite albums ever made by anyone, anywhere.”- Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers

“If it’s possible to wear a CD out with too much usage (it’s not) I did it (I didn’t because it’s not possible). - David Cross

The Glands by Sean Dungan 

On November 9th, 2018, New West Records is set to release the two-decades-in-the-making Double Coda, the fabled third album by the Athens, GA cult favorite the Glands, along with definitive reissues of their two long-out-of-print LPs, Double Thriller (1996) for the first time on vinyl, and The Glands (2000) featuring the band’s original 19-song sequence including 5 rare songs. Frontman Ross Shapiro passed away from lung cancer in 2016 at the age of 53, and the 23 tracks on Double Coda were compiled from recordings he had been making for nearly two decades.

Today, NPR Music premiered the video for Double Coda’s lead-off track “So High,” along with an eclectic new song called “Electricity” and a preview video of the I Can See My House from Here box set. They state, “The Glands may be the greatest band you’ve never heard of” and of Double Coda, “Like Double Thriller, like The Glands, every single one of these 23 tracks is a hit, and a testament to Shapiro’s warped-yet-grounded sensibility.” See the “So High” video and hear “Electricity,” HERE.  Standard editions of Double Thriller, The Glands, Double Coda, and the limited I Can See My House From Here box set are available for pre-order now via NEW WEST RECORDS.

The epic, 23-track Double Coda serves as the anticipated third and final record from the band, with final production overseen by founding member and drummer Joe Rowe, bassist Derek Almstead, and Glands producer David Barbe (longtime Drive-By Truckers producer and bassist for Sugar with Bob Mould).  While all three titles will be available individually across digital platforms, on CD, and standard black vinyl, also released will be the limited edition 5 LP I Can See My House From Here box set compiling the three albums exclusively on colored vinyl -- Double Thriller pressed on electric pink, The Glands on Coke bottle clear, and Double Coda on clear vinyl.  

The box set will also include a 52-page book featuring an essay by the journalist Stephen Deusner, countless unpublished photos, and testimonials written by fans, friends, and fellow musicians from Athens and beyond, including James Mercer (the Shins), actor/comedian David Cross, Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers), Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo), Kurt Wagner (Lambchop), Dave Schools (Widespread Panic), Joey Burns (Calexico), Tim Rutili (Red Red Meat, Califone), Andrew Rieger and Laura Carter (Elf Power), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), John Davis (Superdrag, the Lees of Memory), Vanessa Briscoe Hay (Pylon, Pylon Reenactment Society), Parker Gispert (the Whigs), T. Hardy Morris, film director Lance Bangs, Christopher Lopez (the Rock*A*Teens), the acclaimed visual artist Wayne White (whose painting is featured on the cover of the Glands’ self-titled album), and many more.  

“In many crucial ways the act of making music -- almost always surrounded by friends, usually jamming at his house on Sunset Drive -- was so much more important and rewarding than releasing that music or dealing with labels or arguing with promoters or doing interviews,” Stephen Deusner states in his essay about the band.  “Ross lived for the spark of creation… Given how meticulous he was about his music and how dismissive he was about the music industry, it’s a miracle we have those two albums at all, not to mention the third LP in this set. We lost a unique human being and a remarkable voice, a crucial thread in the pilled fabric of Athens, a man who wrote songs that were hilarious and intensely sad, witty and deeply weird: snapshots from a Southern bohemia of his own making.”  

Of the new Double Coda, band member Derek Almstead states, “As a fan of the music and as a fan of Ross, it was a labor of love to get this set out, to get as much of the music out as possible and into the ears of the people who loved him.  A lot of the material came from CD’s he’d give us at band practice, like ‘Here’s some stuff I’m working on.’ It might have the vocals buried or it might not be finished. I found the best versions of the songs and put together a three-CD set, something like sixty songs.  We whittled that down to what Double Coda is.” 

Says drummer Joe Rowe, “The three of us -- Derek, David Barbe, and me -- all did a lot of research to find everything that Ross had given us over the years.  Derek took all of Ross’s hard drives and went through them, and it turned out that there’s maybe a dozen songs that sounded like they were finished. They just needed to be mixed. Then there was some stuff that was already mixed, already finished.  The record is all the stuff we could find that we felt really confident about. It took a while. It was hard. There were some days when I just couldn’t deal with it because of Ross’s passing. It was just too heavy to think about. But most of the time I felt like I was able to push it forward, even just a little.”  

Rowe continues, “It’s been eighteen years since we’ve released anything, but in rock and roll, mystery always seems to help a little bit. There’s always been a little mystery with the Glands.” 

The Glands Double Coda Track Listing: 

1. So High

2. Pleaser

3. Electricity

4. Possibilities

5. Every Time I Listen to a Stranger 

6. Todd Work

7. Sofa

8. Clover

9. Have Your Cake

10. Piano Jazz

11. Great Waves

12. Pie

13. Rose

14. Atmosphere

15. Rufino Tamayo

16. A Boy Without a Head

17. Tom Robertson

18. Sadie Song

19. Peter Acoustic

20. Body and Soul

21. (A Screwed Up Way of Saying) I Want You

22. Feelies

23. Save a Place for You

The Glands I Can See My House From Here Box Set Track Listing:

Double Thriller (1996)

1. Sunshine Happiness

2. Free Jane 

3. Pretty Merrina 

4. Grey Hats 

5. Two Dollar Wine 

6. Ruddy’s Waltz 

7. Welcome to N.J. 

8. World Half Over 

9. This is The Coat 

10. Call Me Doctor 

11. No. Zero 

12. Skin 

13. The Virgin Loses Again 

14. Son-O-Mine 

15. Two Dollar Reprise 

The Glands (2000)

1. Livin’ Was Easy 

2. When I Laugh 

3. Swim - Prelude 

4. Swim 

5. Mayflower 

6. Lovetown 

7. Straight Down 

8. I Can See My House From Here 

9. Fortress 

10. Work It Out

11. Soul Inspiration

12. Ground 

13. Favorite American 

14. Breathe Out 

15. U R The Mountain

16. Something In The Air

17. Holiday Walk

18. Head That’s Mine

19. Doug’s Hall Rag

Double Coda (2018) 

1. So High

2. Pleaser

3. Electricity

4. Possibilities

5. Every Time I Listen to a Stranger 

6. Todd Work

7. Sofa

8. Clover

9. Have Your Cake

10. Piano Jazz

11. Great Waves

12. Pie

13. Rose

14. Atmosphere

15. Rufino Tamayo

16. A Boy Without a Head

17. Tom Robertson

18. Sadie Song

19. Peter Acoustic

20. Body and Soul

21. (A Screwed Up Way of Saying) I Want You

22. Feelies

23. Save a Place for You

www.TheGlandsBand.com

www.NewWestRecords.com

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