Gliss at Silver Lake Lounge, August 30, 2010

It had been a while since I'd seen Gliss, and hearing they were on the bill of Twilight Sleep's final Silver Lake Lounge residency on Monday, August 30, 2010, and that they were playing at 10 PM, was too good to miss.

Ever since I first saw them on the day before the day before Christmas of 2006 in a holiday-decimated town at the old Knitting Factory on Hollywood Boulevard, before a crowd of about twenty people, I've been a devoted fan. Saw them play a bunch of dates all over town over the next year or so at places like The Viper Room and The Echo, and every time they just nailed it. But I was always surprised that there weren't more people from the local scene in their audience.

Now they're back and they played a lot of new material from a new album they're working on which sounded great, in addition to a few songs from their Love the Virgins CD from 2007 and Devotion Implosion from 2009. Martin , Victoria and David all did the instrument rotation thing and I particularly enjoy each one's abilities on the guitar, but watching the way they interact with each other reveals the great pleasure they appear to get from playing together.

That dreamy, fuzzy, trance rock is intact, highlighted by Martin Klingman's odd, half-sung/half breathed vocals that just comes out of him without any affectation. And the audience was eating it up. The venue was pretty packed that night with the likes of Silversun Pickups' Brian and Nikki and Happy Hollows' Sarah and Charlie. And when they dedicated the last number to a member of their backstage team who's leaving them and sang the Peter Paul and Mary classic, 500 Miles, it all became unbearably moving. It was great to see them again.

whrabbit