“Architecture is a lattice of literary and academic references” says Gaby Graves .
She is speaking of her debut album, released under the arresting moniker Glass Graves. This stage name proves her point, being a veiled homage to the Glass Family of the late J.D. Salinger as well as a nod to a Claes Oldenburg poem in which he describes painting as being an art form asleep “in golden crypts and glass graves.”
She lists other inspirations as “California’s Death Valley, sepia-tone photographs and vague amorous pretexts” .
Musical influences include Danielle Dax, Curve and Lydia Lunch and Gaby describes the songs as driven by “an obsession with reverb, 80’s industrial and post-punk” .
The Architecture album can be downloaded free here .
By day, Gaby is a 28-year-old bioethicist in downtown San Francisco. She’s a Californian girl who is probably more likely to be found surfing the net than the ocean waves and you’d have more chance of meeting her in a bookstore than on the beach. Or perhaps you could try hanging around cemeteries since, like every good goth girl, Gaby has more than a passing interest in the dearly departed.
When she visited Prague – where she spent a lot of time at the Jewish cemetery – she felt the strong presence of Kafka’s ghost and this resulted in The Twin, a track written in the bathtub at her hotel room. The lyrics have suitably bohemian references: “Surrounded by garnet relics and grand facades / Brocade lanterns and Dvorak /Drawling a slow-cobbled filigree through each open door”.
Being struck by the literary nature of these songs, I wanted to know what Gaby liked to read. She named Anais Nin , Silvia Plath, Albert Camus, British spy books, particularly John Le Carre, and Arabic poetry. (The song “Glass Lips” is after an Agha Shahid Ali poem about his mother). In many ways it is a pity that her own evocative poetry is buried beneath the reverb and multi-tracked vocals although, fortunately, her words can be read on her website.
With her obvious allegiance to the ethos of lo-fi , I was also curious to learn whether Gaby felt part of what Zola Jesus dubbed the Crimson wave. She replied: “It’s been a long time since women in this country had ourselves a proper scene or place in music. One of my first loves, musically, was the riot grrrl situation in the Pacific Northwest during the ’90s, when I was in junior high. I don’t know if any of us feel connected today the way those girls in Olympia did then, but I’d like if we did. There is a real critical mass of women making excellent music right now, including the likes of Zola Jesus, Grouper, U.S. Girls, Best Coast. As a musician and a fan, it makes me really happy”.
Certainly if you add LA’s Dum Dum Girls and Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls to this list, the idea of a scene certainly doesn’t seem too fanciful although it could be the kiss of death to start speaking in such terms.
In this company, Glass Graves is closer in feel to the weird ambience of Liz Harris (Grouper) than to the 60s garage pop revival.
While the opening lines to the first track (The Trap Rebaited) are chilly – “You were born beneath rats , Or so you’d say” the overall tone of the album is more seductive than spooky. It has a breathy intimacy and the warm glow of 4AD style shoegaze is ever present. In the song Mess of Live Vines the image of “the sun haunted with electricity” sums up well the warm yet creepy atmosphere of these songs
The closing track Lila Tov (Hebrew for goodnight) has spoken word lines with the same whispered intensity you find in P.J. Harvey’s ‘Catherine’ . The chorus “And the night blew in And the light blew out /And the blood rushed in And then time ran out” – makes it a perfect dark lullaby to spur uneasy dreams.
