gglum Revels in Debauchery and Danger on "Easy Fun"

Exclaim! Staff Picks

BY Kaelen BellPublished Nov 23, 2023

PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love is a career-defining high watermark in a career full of them, but it didn't exactly leave a long sonic shadow in its wake — besides Perfume Genius's 2014 creative overhaul Too Bright, there hasn't been a ton of music released in the decades since TBYML that feels akin to the record's bluesy alien drama. 

However, gglum's new single "Easy Fun" — the follow-up to the addictive "SPLAT!" — manages to capture just a touch of Harvey's gothic swell. It's a sonic familiarity more than anything else (gglum's youthful itchiness still feels worlds away from Harvey's steely-eyed melodrama) but with its groaning, groovy bass organ and loose percussive patter, it feels like the spunky younger cousin to Harvey's "Down by the Water."

gglum (English songwriter Ella Smoker) attacks the song with a deadpan menace, backed by schoolyard chants and glaring cascades of synth and electronic texture. It's a retelling of all the debauchery and drunken wildness that coloured Smoker's youth, a playful reminiscence that's shaded by a sense of real danger.  


 
(Secretly Canadian)

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