Earnest and dimensional, “Just A Place” describes the nomadic existence lead singer and songwriter Ned Russin has felt as a result of living in multiple cities the last few years.
“When I started Glitterer, I tried to act like place wasn’t important to me anymore,” explained the Kingston, Pennsylvania native. “I had been living in New York for a few years when I started the band. Since then, I’ve moved again, and the band has taken on a DC identity. I love PA, specifically Kingston, and it’s obviously an integral part of my understanding of myself. This song, whose title was almost ‘William Penn Overture,’ tries to hold onto home after it’s too late, and it’s for Rulio the Groundskeeper.”
The release of “Just A Place” follows the announcement of Glitterer’s fourth LP and full band debut, Rationale, out February 24, 2024 via ANTI-. The former solo project of the Title Fight alum, Glitterer is Ned Russin (vocals, bass guitar), Nicole Dao (keyboard), Jonas Farah (drums), and Mike French (guitar), with Connor Morin recording guitar on the record.
Russin started Glitterer in 2017, about a year after his previous band, Title Fight, stopped touring. He was in New York, studying at Columbia, reading, writing, thinking, paying exorbitant rent to live in a nice apartment in Bushwick, and quietly panicking about the direction of his life and the nature of existence. He would sit in his bedroom in the nice apartment and write music using loops, synths, his bass, and his voice. Among his recent songwriting influences are Lilys and Unrest, though the record evokes other local legends like Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses, as well as some of the more theatrical and conceptual ’70s and ’80s British groups (e.g., Wire, Siouxsie and The Banshees) that made early and lasting impressions on the D.C. scene.
“The earliest song I wrote for ‘Rationale’ was about getting a job,” Russin says. “A lot of the subsequent songs continued in that territory, wondering about what I should be doing, trying to figure out my ‘purpose,’ both philosophically and vocationally.” In keeping with D.C. hardcore history’s unabashed intellectualism, Russin lends credit his literary influences including author and publisher Martin Riker. His most recent novel, The Guest Lecture, records the involuted, anxious, and epigrammatic thoughts that invade a young economist’s mind during an especially dark night of the soul. “Ideology,” the protagonist says to herself at one point, is “all the assumptions you make about how to live, and you live so deeply inside these assumptions that it’s very difficult…to remember which parts of your reality are natural and inevitable, versus which parts are things people just made up.”
Glitterer will be embarking on a run of dates joining The Hotelier and Foxing in February of next year. Following that, they will be joined by Glixen for a brief March headline run.
TOUR DATES
2/9 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade $
2/10 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham $
2/12 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall $
2/13 – Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater $
2/14 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk Austin $
2/17 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco Theater $
2/18 – San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park $
2/20 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory $
2/21 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall $
2/23 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile $
2/27 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex $
2/28 – Denver, CO @ Summit Music Hall $
3/1 – Iowa City, IA @ Gabe’s %
3/2 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cloudland Theater %
3/3 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen %
3/4 – Detroit, MI @ Lager House %
3/5 – Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground %
3/6 – Montreal, QC @ Sotterenea %
3/7 – Somerville, MA @ Crystal Ballroom %
3/8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Meadows %
3/30 – Washington DC @ Songbyrd
$ – w/ The Hotelier & Foxing
% – with Glixen
