the first glass beach album by glass beach
songs you should hear: glass beach and classic j dies & goes to hell pt 1

This is a huge entry for me.. Glass beach was basically my whole life for a whole year. On my last fm, they still tower as my #1 artist with 30,000 streams - I don't think they will ever be overtaken. This album changed my life in 2021, one of the worst years of my life, and I got suuuuuper attached to this. This album has high highs and low lows (not as in the quality, but the vibes of the songs), which fit perfectly with my everchanging bipolar mood. There is a song here for everyone. I've seen some people say the first half is amazing, and the second sucks, and I have also seen vice versa - It really depends whether you enjoy the higher upbeat jams of the first half, or the slower depressed songs of the second. I adore both.

The sound of this album is AMAZING!!! They really do everything lol. It gets so loud and so quiet, it gets more acoustic and it gets more synthy, there are beautiful melodies and also flat delivered dead verses, its hard to describe. Despite all this, the album still feels extremely cohesive and unified. As a bassist, I adore all the bass in this album lol. I saw them live (my first concert!) in 2021, and their bassist was incredible to watch - I was standing right by her. A really awesome thing about glass beach is they're very transparent about their work process and demos n stuff. They have a huge drive of all the demos for this album (and sheet music too) and it is super fun to listen to the songs change n improve n evolve. J, the singer, said once in this album's documentary that they could work on a song forever - it never feels finished, and eventually she just has to force herself to stop. And I can really hear that in their music. I thinkt thats why it all sounds so full and expanded on, bc it HAS been expanded on SO MUCH.

I love this album a lot for its storytelling capabilities. Although each song can stand alone well, I liked to combine different songs to tell mini stories. Like, neon glow, glass beach and orchids all have heavy imagery of space & the stars - I liked to think each song progressed one persons journey with life and mortality. Yoshi's island and bedroom community, 2 songs about the trans experience, also have a cohesive story to me. Soft, calico, and dallas all feel like they'd be the same person as well. I've never seen anyone talk about the stories of this album, but I think these songs correlations with each other must have been semi intentional since Glass Beach went a lot heavier on story telling in their second album. You just get pieces of it here.