The winding path of
Cherry Glazerr's evolution began with bandleader
Clementine Creevy writing strange and often juvenile songs as a teenager and just several years later had moved through phases of quirky garage grunge to arrive at the cold, polished sheen of third album
Stuffed & Ready. Always centered around
Creevy's increasingly dark musings, each album has upped production and more accurately dialed in a recreation of '90s grunge angst. The muscular power chords and hyperconfident thrust of 2017's
Apocalipstick were a far cry from the spooky songs about grilled cheese sandwiches and house pets that the band started out with, and
Stuffed & Ready pushes further in the direction of '90s-modelled loud-soft alt-rock. Nowhere near the garage punk outbursts or naive pondering that earlier versions of
Cherry Glazerr reveled in, the ten songs here use gloomy guitar blasts and mid-tempo rhythmic attacks as a steady framework for the distant, angular moods of
Creevy's songs. "Daddi" laces its eerie verses with synth arpeggios, ticking drum machine hi-hats, and manipulated vocal samples, with
Creevy's ghostly vocals recalling early
Blonde Redhead before exploding into huge choruses. Similarly, "Self-Explained" slinks along, leaving enough dynamic space for its spooky sound effects and self-conscious lyrical themes to stand out. "Wasted Nun" and "Juicy Socks" are well built with barbed-wire vocal hooks that are equal parts
Creevy's uniquely slanted songwriting and faithful grunge worship. ~ Fred Thomas
