Glosser Face ‘Daunting’ Challenge After Massive Success of ‘Downer’
“We have a show on January 31 at DC9, and it’s going to be a big one,” Glosser vocalist Riley Fanning told The Bad Penny early last month. She wasn’t kidding. The dreamy, indie-pop pride of Washington, D.C. are formally debuting their majestic new EP, Angel Dust (all four songs are presented in this post), tonight at the city’s hipster hotspot. (Yeah, it technically came out in November, but you know what they say about nitpickers: Just like snitches, they get stitches too.)
Tonight’s show effectively kicks off the next chapter in Glosser’s career after their 2023 record Downer turned out to be one of the year’s most universally beloved indie records, warranting a deluxe edition that dropped a year ago. Fanning and her partner, instrumentalist Corbin Sheehan, chatted us up about the band’s past, present and future—and there’s no better time to unveil the conversation as Glosser turn the page.
Simple question to start: How’s life with Glosser these days?
Sheehan: We added some new live members and have been practicing a lot.
What is at all challenging to bring new musicians into the fold, given the strong connection the two of you have?
Fanning: It’s always going to be the two of us as the core members and writers, but we’ve had a dream for a long time of wanting to add more live elements because with only two of us, we can only do so much. I only sing, so Corbin plays, like, a million things onstage.
Sheehan: It’s more about [developing] a new way to express our songs. And then we met some really cool people recently, and it all kind of fell into place. We’re still just a synth duo. We had a drummer once or twice on one-off shows, and those were some of our favorite shows. I feel like drums especially add a lot to our live set. People dance more [because] they can feel the music more physically. [The new touring band member additions] should be a more permanent situation. Also, I can let my guard down a little bit. When we play with a drummer, I don’t feel like everything on the instrument side has to come from me.
Fanning: We’ve also wanted to add in more rock elements, so that goes hand in hand with adding in more live players.
When you first got together, did you lay out a vision for the project? And has the trajectory of your band followed that vision so far?
Fanning: We both had big dreams and were very serious about the project and knew that we were going to take it as far as it could go. I don’t know if we had really any specific plans other than starting to write and record immediately and starting to put together a sound that we wanted. We really wanted to play shows and to tour. And we’ve done both those things past what we could have even thought of.
When we first started, I was really specific about wanting to only do dream pop. And our first EP [self-titled and released in July 2021] is very classic dream pop. I was like, “I’m never going to do a ballad song. I’m never going to do a rock song.” I was very rigid in what I wanted.
I’d also never really done music before we started this band. As time has gone on, we’ve both shifted, and Corbin’s pushed me in a lot of ways to open my horizons. Although I love all types of music, I just didn’t want to make all of it. And now I’m kind of the opposite, where we’ve gotten really interested in making all types of music, and we want to do as much as we can. It’s weird because Corbin’s the only bandmate I’ve ever had. And he has been in a lot of bands and he’s like, “It’s not usually this easy.” Usually people don’t agree [as] much [as we do]. We usually agree on, like, 90 percent of decisions with our songs.
It sounds like you didn’t necessarily envision yourself becoming a musician.
Fanning: I always really loved music. I was obsessed with it, especially in high school and college. I was just making playlists for hours at night and had this secret dream of being a singer. I loved to sing. I didn’t think I could because I was singing karaoke in my room alone. [Then] I had a moment after college where I was like, “Why not try? You have one life to live.”
I have this deep, deep passion and desire for this thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. [But] I had no musical background. So I said, “I’ll give myself a year to try to put a project together and try to get something going. And if anything happens, I’ll keep going. And if not, I’ll drop it.” And things worked out.
Corbin, where were you at in terms of your life and headspace shortly before the two of you came together, and what led to your decision to collaborate with Riley?
Sheehan: I played in different bands, like college punk/emo-type bands, but [eventually wanted] to do something more tangible, more serious. Something that I could have a career in.
Do you remember the first moment or a song when you really felt a connection together?
Sheehan: Probably the first couple songs we wrote.
Fanning: “The Artist” [from Downer] … I started working on it, and then Corbin started writing a melody and the bass line. And it just came together really fast. Angel Dust came together quickly too. But some of [our songs] take a really long time. Months and months of thinking about them, or putting them away and coming back to them. We’ve had a lot of songs that fell together really easily, but I wish it happened more.
Corbin, I read that you consider yourself to be in more of an auxiliary role in the group. Is that accurate?
Sheehan: Yeah, I feel like my job is to let Riley say what she wants to say and make it sound good. That’s how I’ve always kind of viewed it. She writes all the words and stuff like that, so it makes sense.
Is that what you were looking for in a collaborator, Riley?
Fanning: I mean, it’s worked out so far. I think I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but this has been pretty perfect. He doesn’t really affect my vocal melodies often. Sometimes he tweaks them, but it’s like I have my half and he has his half, and then we meet in the middle and edit as we go.
Did you think about making Angel Dust into an LP instead of an EP?
Fanning: Yeah. We were really unsure of what we wanted to do after our first LP. Our first album took a lot out of us. And I don’t think we felt ready to make [our] next statement [yet]. We actually have a lot more unreleased music of all different types.
We were just like, “What do we do with all this? It’s not really an album. It doesn’t really fit together. They’re all kinda one-off songs.” So we decided to hone in and try to create a smaller collection so we could put out something. It’s a little bit daunting to think about the next LP. We definitely want to do it. We’re excited. But it might be a second. We’re probably going to do at least another EP, or if not, maybe two before we do another LP.
An EP feels so much quicker [and] fresh. That’s the hardest part of [making an] album, [because it takes longer]. [Downer] was [also] very daunting because it was our first [LP]. So we were like, “It’s this big statement. It has to be really intentional.” And it was. But that also took a long time to figure out, a lot of writing and thinking about what the songs were saying. I didn’t want to just put together an album of random songs. I wanted it all to be a story and it all to connect in some way.
With the EP, we didn’t really do that at all. We kind of did the opposite. I was like, “Let’s write about whatever and see what comes out.” And we were not as intensive about the exact storyline of the EP.
What is it about dream pop that you really connect with? Do you consider it to be a meditative experience?
Fanning: The reason why I wanted to make dream pop as opposed to all the other types of music I liked was because I felt so connected to the synths and the sounds. Also, I’m the number one fan of Beach House. I wanted to make that type of beautiful music.
You mentioned getting the chance to play “dream venues.” Which were they?
Fanning: The biggest one for me was DC9, just because I used to go there all the time. We met at DC9, actually. We’ve now played there a bunch, and I just feel so cool when we [do].
Last question: It’s been two years since you released your first album. How have your lives changed?
Fanning: We’re now on a label [If Then Records], so that’s pretty cool. It’s not like our lives are so dramatically different, but we definitely have made a lot of friends in the music world, all these connections to these great venues. Playing a lot more and getting more opportunities has been really, really awesome.
This article was edited for length and clarity.
Get your ticket here for Glosser’s special Angel Dust EP release gig at DC9 this evening. Doors are at 7 p.m., with the show starting a half-hour later. Indie-rockers Close and singer/songwriter Flo Petite, also based in D.C., will commence their comrades’ celebration with opening sets.
Go to Glosser’s Bandcamp page to check out the Angel Dust EP, their other releases and much more.
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