Gloss - Front Porch

Minnesota’s Jordan Bleau sent me this top-shelf single and writes:

Hey Mark,

I moved to Minneapolis from Iowa to escape some serious demons, and the isolation that I experienced when I got up here was both live-saving and incredibly alienating. I knew no one when I got up here. I started going to shows by myself a lot, and I often wouldn’t talk to anyone and just get completely absorbed in the music. It seemed like a lot of the stuff I wanted to see didn’t draw a lot of people in a scene dominated by hip hop and bluegrass, which was fine with me.

I’d been recording my own music (that I never released) since I was 14 or so, often playing most of the instruments myself, so when I saw the same group of teenagers at shows two nights in a row (Frankie Rose/DIIV and then The Drums/Craft Spells) I decided to approach them. I told them I’d play whatever instrument they wanted and record them if they wanted to start a band. All of us are fairly detached individuals, but when we met up to practice the first time there wasn’t really a huge need for words. Not that it was spectacular right out of the gate or anything - we started off playing Cure rip-offs in the guitar player Sean’s parents’ house in the suburbs. But I could tell that these kids were excited, and I felt like a big brother to them in many ways, having played in bands before myself. 

We recorded a few songs last Summer and then studied I up on production techniques and spent hours and hours tweaking and refining them before we decided to release a single, “Front Porch”, which led to a massive response both locally and internationally. When I say massive I mean we got over a thousand plays in a couple of months, which is a huge deal to both myself and really any 19-year-old, but especially these kids.

The attention led to an offer from a good samaritan that had recently started a record label to press a 7” for us, an offer from another local label to put out our next release, and a bunch of show offers. Most importantly, we started to make some new friends, which I think can be difficult both for me and the rest of these dudes. And a lot of other humans. The 7” comes out in April via Manic Pop! Records. UK blog One For The People interviewed us about it. We’re going to record an EP at the end of this month and we’ve got some dates at the legendary First Avenue, which sort of still doesn’t seem real.

We’re underdogs, we’re young, and we’re trying to put out some music that disrupts the established local scene here. It’s tough, but I know that helping these kids do what we do and also just making music period is one of the only things that combats the isolation that most of us feel. We don’t party or socialize but when we get together and make music I feel like we can actually make people that certain sense of detachment. I hope you’ll enjoy these songs. Keep doing what you’re doing, and thank you.

-Jordan, Drums

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