Label: Get Better
Producer: Jeff Rosenstock
Release Year: 2026
Listen: Spotify / Apple Music
What started as a serendipitous find when I reviewed Gladie’s 2022 album, Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out, has turned into an intentional and eager review of this, their third album, No Need to Be Lonely. Produced by none other than wacky indie rock troubadour Jeff Rosenstock, I’m immediately aware that I enjoy the production on this record better than the last one right out of the gate. Augusta Koch’s voice is pushed up in the mix and Rosenstock has found that great twangy break in her voice that ads a tinge of alt-country to the band’s relatively straight-forward approach to indie rock. It’s free of gimmicks, the drums sound terrific (a qualifier for me) and the whole album just sounds like a solid version of where you kind of hope the poppier side of the genre can stick.
The album opens with what is admittedly the song that drew me, “Push Me Down.” It was the first single I heard in a new music mix without knowing what band I was hearing. But I immediately looked at my phone to see what the heck it was. It just has such a classic indie rock vibe. An excellent vocal performance, pummeling drums and some cool overdriven guitars. Like some of the tracks from MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks, I find myself putting on this track way too much and never getting sick of it. I have a problem. It’s not as if the albums are similar per se — though that twang exists in both — but there is something comforting, but enigmatic, about both. Granted, Gladie’s album feels more personal and cathartic and turnt up. Like on another great tune, “Car Alarm.” It’s just a banger of a modern rock song that doesn’t need to lean into anything fancy, but treads the whole taking stock in oneself, self analysis that indie rock has done so well since the early 90s when everyone called themselves losers and freaks and weirdos. Of course, this is a person who has done a bit more self-reflection than all that, but you get it.
The band does go almost full down-tempo alt-country on one song, “I Will If You Will,” and I admittedly don’t love it. It’s fine, though, every artist is allowed to have one experiment per album. But, for the most part, the band sticks to a good, raucous tempo. Or at least moves to one at some point in the song. Again, I very much enjoy Rosenstock’s production, and the thing sounds really solid. They don’t do any weird drowned-in-sound or crazy reverb or anything. I’m always perplexed when bands burry their lead singer’s voice under a wall of sound. I get that not every singer is as dynamic as Koch, but it always seems like a waste when you can barely hear someone’s voice under waves of echo. She also avoids the recent trend in rock to basically eschew straight-forward words. I mean, while I’ve enjoyed albums over the years filled with esoteric lyrics that either mean nothing or are so symbolic and sparse as to mean way different things to different people, but this one reads like more of a personal journal entry or post-session vlog. But in the best possible way. All of this adds up to a really enjoyable album that is definitely vying for one of my top tens of the year. It just all comes together for a classic indie rock album, which is something that I feel we need in this day and age of not knowing what or who to trust.
MORE GLADIE ALBUMS
