Glasser, the elevated electronic project from Cameron Mesirow, shares a new single “Easy” off her forthcoming album crux due out October 6th via One Little Independent Records. Glasser wrote the song about her first love Noah who passed away. Speaking about the new single Glasser shares, “It was about a dream that we were in the same place, and it was a very playful dream. It felt like finally some kind of return to some of the good feelings around knowing someone despite their end.”
crux takes Glasser’s entrancing blend of dreamy experimental pop and layered electronics to explore themes of personal identity, emotional vulnerability, and the human experience. The album maps journeys of cathartic self-discovery as she unpacks intimate experiences. Specifically, the tracks on crux discuss the death of an old friend, her meditations on the fragility of life and the delicacy of relationships in times of uncertainty. More than anything it’s about the importance of creativity and writing while healing, and on an individual level, looking inward and the examination of one’s grief, anxiety, and insecurities. Musically it searches outward, it includes the use of traditional folk, Celtic to communicate her Scottish roots, and Eastern-European styles, all introduced to her lush, atmospheric production, intricate vocal harmonies, and complex rhythms.
Apart from her majestic 2022 single “New Scars”, crux marks a return following her sublime “Sextape” mix in 2018 and two critically acclaimed albums, Ring and Interiors, released in 2010 and 2013 respectively. In this time Glasser performed at MoMA, PS1, The Walker Arts Center, MOCA, Coachella, Primavera, Latitude, Field Day, and she toured with the XX and Sigur Rós’ Jónsi. She’s also collaborated on remix projects with the likes of Fever Ray, Jamie XX and John Talabot.
Of the hiatus Glasser explains; “Just getting back to making songs was hard for me after the last album. When I made my first album, I didn’t have an established routine of trying and failing, it was very immediate. The second record was made after a few years of touring, which is a very unstable life, and I still didn’t establish a relationship to creating things regularly. After its release, I didn’t have a centre from which to recompose myself. The thing that finally brought me back to music as a positive experience was that I began taking lessons to learn Balkan singing. I wanted to try to learn all this vocal gymnastic stuff that I was listening to in the Bulgarian state television choir records. I started writing songs and working toward an album.”
The tracks on crux weave disparate elements together into a cohesive, complimentary whole. They make up an album that seamlessly marries an eclectic array of sounds to create a complete, immersive concept piece about the search for meaning and answers through the creation of art. Coming back to the making of an album after a decade (released 10 years and 2 days after to be precise) wasn’t only therapeutic but necessary to process notions of life and death.
Born in Boston, raised in the Bay Area by musician parents, Mesirow crafted GarageBand demos that pitted her delicate, swooping vocals over sparse electronic rhythms and circular melodies that evoked avant-garde music and global folk. These tracks made their way to labels True Panther and Young Turks, which released both her albums. She self-released Sextape, an intimate project that built her production around conversations on formative sexual experiences, which was praised by fans and critics alike. She is now signed to One Little Independent Records.