Cherry Glazerr has always been a band of tumultuous music and unpredictable sounds, but on Stuffed & Ready, that’s used to its benefit. The three–person band (named after Chery Glaser, a radio host on KCRW), features singer/guitarist Clementine Creevy, drummer Tabor Allen, and bassist Devin O’Brien (synth player Sasami Ashworth has since left the band to pursue her own solo project, Sasami). With this newest release, Cherry Glazerr breaks their conventional mold to explore even more confrontational rock. The album is far more cohesive than their previous works, providing a fluent experience from beginning to end, and showing the full extent of Clem Creevy’s incisive lyrics. Combining gleaming guitar riffs with Creevy’s sharp-witted words, Stuffed & Ready is necessary listening in 2019.
The album opens with three of its strongest songs, “Ohio,” “Daddi,” and “Wasted Nun.” “Ohio” starts off with a lo-fi recording of Creevy on acoustic guitar, shortly before bursting into fuzzed–out shredding. Centering on grungy guitar sounds, it’s a visceral entrance into the world of the album. Diving into the far more electronic and minimalistic “Daddi,” the message is the focus here:
"Where should I go daddi?/What should I say?/Where should I go?/Is it okay with you?/ who should I fuck daddi?/Is it you?"
The meaning is hardly subtle. "Daddi" is a satirical song embodying an uncertain narrator who looks to her significant other for guidance, originally submitting, but in the chorus rejecting the man’s control, singing, “don’t hold my hand/ don’t be my man!” “Wasted Nun” follows, with guitars not–unlike Nirvana's, and channeling earlier Cherry Glazerr hits such as "Told You I’d Be With The Guys" and "Nurse Ratched.” In each verse, a slight shift of style keeps the song moving forward, barreling into an all–out chorus to end.
From there, Cherry Glazerr turns inward. The album adopts more upbeat, conventionally timed and structured songs, with a glaring edge that stimulates the listener and provides an even flow from one song to the other. On “Isolated,” Creevy adopts a slinky guitar, with jazzy bass and drums. It features a gothic chorus, dwelling on the narrator’s descent into madness as she pushes everyone away, until she begins to turn on herself. “Juicy Socks” revolves around the plunky sound of guitar licks during the verses, which are thrown away at the chorus for chunky strumming and Creevy’s eerie vocals. In the pinnacle of self–hatred on the album, “Stupid Fish,” Creevy sings, “I'm a stupid fish and so are you/ Maybe I'm mad 'cause I see me in you/ I don't wanna try to pretend/ I see myself in you and that's why I fucking hate you!” As she brings her normally distanced voice to a shriek, Creevy creates the most passionate moment of Stuffed & Ready, which will grab your attention even late in the album.
Now stripped down to their essentials as a band, Cherry Glazerr finds their sound with sharp, biting lyrics and Creevy’s superb vocals, simultaneously sickly sweet and creepily vacant. Each song feels like a haunted doll, so terrifying that you can't stop looking. Every track has a story to tell, and it commands you to keep listening.
