With their sophomore album What Now (2016), North Carolina electropop duo Sylvan Esso claimed to have given full permission to themselves to "just make bangers.” But when said album features a relatively radio-friendly song titled “Radio" which presents a critique of formulaic pop songwriting and features a lyric like “Don’t you look good sucking American dick?", you know that the disclaimer is not entirely accurate.
At their best, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn lace the carefree hedonism one typically associates with 'bangers' with emotional complexity and sonic ingenuity. This was apparent on "Die Young", the album's lead single, as with "The Glow". Both tracks foreground a euphoric moment - realizing that a relationship is for the long run, recalling a period of youthful bliss - that becomes refracted by an implicit acknowledgement of its' fleeting, hard-won nature.
The latter's simple and jubilant chorus ('And I remember The Glow, oh, oh/ Yeah, I remember The Glow, oh, oh') is scored by a swarm of dense and glowing organ-like sounds, which intensifies between Meath's wistful declarations. Each blitz of frantic synths brings to mind the uncomparable rush that follows an entirely novel experience, which Meath reveals to be a youthful encounter with impactful music: 'In my headphones/ After school and slightly stoned'. Her minimalist verses present another key experience of adolescence - intimate peer relationships - by attributing a host of characters (Willy, Avi, Deanna, Meg, Allie, Micah) with a particular adjective, and then singling out Phil for 'singing just to me, only'.
In an April interview with NPR, Meath revealed the full biographical extent of the song:
"'The Glow' is about listening to The Microphones' record The Glow Pt. 2, one of the first records that I really loved. Each track made my heartsick, high-schooler self feel less lonely and more safe. I used to listen to it on a Discman while I walked home from shows at The Middle East or TT The Bear's in Cambridge MA. All of the people mentioned in the verses are people I went to high school with, whom I was completely in awe of — pretty much still am.
"Overall, it's a song about being lifted off the earth by music — a feeling that I was so used to when I was 14 and which I am constantly reaching towards and trying to create as a musician. I miss it and I'm worried that it's happening less and less. I want to give it to other people."
The song may be simple in its sonic and lyrical structure, but it speaks eloquently on how music can have such as memorable impact on one's formative adolescent experience. The fuzzy synths take you back to the intensity of that feeling and all the emotions that were at stake, while Meath's narrative framing makes you poignantly aware that, in time, even this memory can recede altogether into the realm of the forgotten.
