glass candy + glasser

Ida No and Cameron Mesirow are two of our finest divas, Ida the haunted voice behind Glass Candy, Cameron performing as Glasser, a hypnotizing project out of Los Angeles that we’ve been championing since last fall. On Saturday night both played in Brooklyn — Glass Candy in a bowling alley, Glasser in a DIY space — and I caught them back to back.

I hadn’t seen Glass Candy since their punk Love Love Love days. And yeah their sound changed drastically from that raw cacophony to Beatbox‘s disco, but all the underlying stuff is the same: Glass Candy are about attitude, a detached hedonism.

On stage it’s just Ida No — leopard spandex clinging her legs, perfect bangs falling just right — and keyboardist/collaborator Johnny Jewel — shirt unbuttoned like retro Eurotrash. Ida prances and shakes, a confident dancer with a lean body. Johnny milks the backing tracks with dramatic dances and exaggerated playing. Together they project competence and confidence.

Ida No’s voice is not the best on-stage, and only the really good songs — like “Candy Castle” — truly shine. There were highlights, but overall it was a bit dull.

It was my second time seeing Glasser, the first at this past SXSW where she blew me away. At Saturday’s Glasslands performance she was backed by Tanlines, a duo who have done incredible remixes of her tracks and some other people’s, too. Most of the music was backing track (some occasional guitar accompaniment and some percussive melodies), and so Cameron Mesirow, prowling across the small stage, was the entire show.

Mesirow has a flexible voice not all that unlike Bjork’s, though she uses hers in different ways. It’s an excellent voice, and it comes through live much more so than on record. She’s a good performer, too. She’s constantly dancing and moving, her steps deliberate and lunging. Most of the time she sings with her face to the ground.

She is no shrinking violet, and she’s confident of her ability. Her songs twinkle and shudder, but there’s real heft. The arrangements are very spare and the rhythms are often vaguely Caribbean. Her voice dangles above.

“Apply,” which was on our eMusic Selects compilation earlier this year, was a standout, but I was disappointed that with Tanlines on-hand they didn’t perform their remix of the track, which is maybe her best moment so far. “Glad,” a very delicate, pillowy song of hers, didn’t translate live, but it’s still a longtime favorite.

The crowd for Glasser was small, but her potential is still there. Signed to True Panther Sounds (the label that will be releasing the Girls album), hopefully a debut album will come soon.