Glossary: How We Handle Our Midnights

Glossary's third album, How We Handle Our Midnights, seems designed to make longtime indie-rock fans melt within its first minute. For six years, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Joey Kneiser and the rest of his small-town Tennessee band have employed a bash-it-out, kitchen-sink approach reminiscent of mid-'90s outfits like Butterglory and Small Factory, but with a flair for expansiveness and guitar heroism that rivals proto-grunge acts Eleventh Dream Day and Cell. The group members tend to take their shambling tunefulness and stretch out, playing closely together and following their own natural momentum. On How We Handle Our Midnights, Kneiser and company nod to their country and classic-rock influences, generating a warm, rootsy sound while still raising a racket and heading off in unexpected directions. On "These City Lights Shine," Glossary's tightness and sense of adventure manifest in a lyrical guitar lick which floats into a fuzzy, jagged riff, while the rhythm section at first bounces steadily before gaining strength. By the time Kneiser's raspy, twangy vocals enter, a minute has elapsed and Glossary has established its casual but firm control over roaring southern alt-rock. The similarly rolling and stinging "Remember Me Tomorrow Night" follows, chugging along long enough for its rhythmic clatter to penetrate the unconscious, while the harmonica-and-slide showcase "Hold Me Down" reintroduces a country element while stating the album's theme in lyrics about wanting to hover high above a small town, to see the open fields and the roads that connect to elsewhere. How We Handle Our Midnights flags some in its second half, or maybe it just never again matches the power of "At Midnight," but it stays strong by returning to the idea of youthful dreams tempered by gradual acceptance of the go-nowhere pace of Middle America. There are echoes of strip-mall practice spaces and undeveloped grassy lots in Glossary's wall-rattling stomps, and an understanding of the restlessness that comes from being stuck.