Glass Canyons - Fall Forever

Glass Canyons

Fall Forever
self-released; 2014

3.8 out of 5

By Jamie Robash

The Southampton, UK, six-piece Glass Canyons began to play their furtive blend of emotive pop-rock in 2012 under the name The Fever Dream and under that name won a battle of the bands competition after which they allegedly smashed a bottle of champagne and in between then and now changed their name to Glass Canyons and continue to rock out in and around Southampton. The five lads and one lone lass have recently independently released an EP entitled Fall Forever, four songs steeped in the familiar territory of love and loss amongst two people who for whatever reason are unable to stick it out for the long haul. However as the four songs on Fall Forever indicate the ghosts of those former relationships are still very much alive and haunting the memory of front man Jack Kerrigan, who puts these hauntings into words. 

There is a certain childishness to the music that Glass Canyons makes. However it is a childishness of memory, that feeling of looking back as a wizened youth at a time during which one never truly took advantage because at the time it was impossible to understand how precious that time was. And the great joke which life plays on us all is that it relents to let us understand that we should take advantage of moments at hand and by the time we realize we should it is already too late. And it is precisely these places and these lost moments of life, which provide the setting and the plot of which Glass Canyons pop rock glossed laments take place.  

Jack Kerrigan’s vocals roughly rival a bit of the same strained falsetto that lends itself to more famous front men such as The Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Beirut’s Zach Condon. And though Kerrigan doesn’t quite fill these big shoes quite so completely yet, he sounds as though he is sizing them up for future use. 

Fall Forever opens with the spritely guitar driven jam, “Fly” which steadily builds into a noise rock anthem before coming to abrupt and quiet close. That close leads into the seven-minute long “The Underside of Heaven,” another slow-rock builder with tinny guitars and catchy refrains that again crescendos and finally ends in a subdued manner. 

Fall Forever quiets down on the acoustic drifter “Nomad,” which contains the heartbreaking and sad refrain of the lines, “She said 'I used to be a wanderer like you / but then I grew / She said 'I used to be a wanderer like you.” The rock picks up again on the closer “Gallows” a five-plus minute jam that recalls early ‘90s American garage rock. 

It is hard to find fault with Fall Forward but its title represents the music the album contains more ironically than Glass Canyons may realize. The straightforward guitar, bass and drums rock that Glass Canyons plays can be heard echoing through canyons all throughout the world. And the glass involved could be seen as a looking glass in which these many other bands are reflected. There comes a time when one realizes that when everyone is moving in one direction, it is perhaps a good time to stop and start heading a different way towards a new territory which no one has yet seen nor heard before.

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