The Skirmishers, by Glass Echoes

The Skirmishers by Glass Echoes, released 15 March 2024 1. Fractured 2. Say What You Need To Say 3. The Skirmishers 4. Washed Away 5. Welsh Winter 6. Cold 7. Somewhere in the Valley 8. Long Way 9. Running Dark 10. Refine It 11. Traitor Questioning the questions. When making art, how beneficial can the questions be? “Will this work?” “Should we do this, or that?” Maybe there’s a time to shed the questions and simply let the creativity answer on its own. This was the natural mental wrestling match for Glass Echoes (Chris Bartels and Ben Noble) while writing what would become their sophomore album together, The Skirmishers. After excitedly, and almost accidentally, stumbling upon their unique experimental indie-pop sound with 2020’s debut Breathe, described by Atwood Magazine as “a record of fragility and depth,” one wouldn’t fault the Minneapolis duo for asking questions, now that they were past the accidental creative stage. But Glass Echoes was always meant to be simply a vehicle of creative freedom and escape, and so the conscious choice of avoiding unnecessary questions - and in turn, simply letting the sonic journey go where it goes - became a priority and an exercise. And it led to this, The Skirmishers - a cinematic roller coaster of ups and downs - an emotional odyssey of sound. The title track encompasses that ride with unexpected weirdness amidst heavy, nostalgic analog synth pulses and Noble’s swirling vocal reverie. Another standout amongst the peaks and valleys is “Traitor,” built on a raw, sporadic phone recording of a piano part Bartels recorded on a whim at his in-laws’ house. Of the collaborative process, Bartels shares, ““When I heard ‘traitor’ in Ben’s lyrics, the vocal phrase ‘try again’ popped into my head - which is when I came up with the chorus’ second line, somewhat of a ‘response’ to Ben’s line. Would you ‘try again’? As in, is this relationship, or this thing you’re chasing in life - is it worth the conflict? Will you fight for it?” Is it worth the conflict? Will you fight for it? Oddly enough, these were in turn questions that Noble and Bartels had to ask themselves during the creative process of The Skirmishers, actively dodging too many questions about what if or should we, and simply going where the songs lead.