ALBUM PREMIERE: The Other Each Other Mines Privilege and Classism with Heavy Rock Sounds on ‘Mirror Memorials’

Joel Finch isn’t a real person. You can try to Google the frontman and sole member of The Other Each Other, but you’ll only find writeups on the band. From Seattle, TOEO is a mysterious entity with an intentionally sparse website. No tour dates, no artist bio, just highly layered and conceptualized post-punk songs.

The new album Mirror Memorials is his most traditional rock album yet with more guitar effects, more variation, and lots of distortion. The constraints of the pandemic set a fire in him to finally create the sounds that had been stuck in his head for years. Playing in a basement with others always nearby, he Macgyvered a setup that allowed him to record silently out of an Impulse Response Box. Because of this unique configuration, he kept instrumentation to only the building blocks of rock: drums, bass, and a guitar.

Today Glide is excited to premiere the album in its entirety ahead of its release date on August 19th via Paper Dice Recordings. Hitting you right out of the gate with a wallop of crashing guitars, the album immediately grabs you with its post-punk-meets-indie-meets-grunge sound. Though the album is undeniably heavy at many points, it is also insanely melodic and it’s hard not get pulled into the cacophony of savory rock sounds taking place. Mixed and mastered by Tim Green (The Fucking Champs) at Louder Studios and sonically inspired by Deep Sea Diver, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, and older Sebadoh, Mirror Memorials is TOEO’s thoughtful and empathetic distillation of the tensions Americans face today.

Like other great rock albums, Mirror Memorials is an interrogation of privilege and classism. Three sets of count and counterpoint tracks are followed by three tracks that stand alone. The count/counterpoint tracks are an exercise in duality. As Finch says, “The truth is probably not just one perspective, but multiple.” In “Blank Space,” your phone is your life and you watch people stand in line with their heads bowed down. Your time is filled with the blank space of digital ephemeral. Its counterpoint “Loose Nets” explores life through the lens of someone who can’t afford a smartphone—and how it’s a privilege to own something that lets you escape the mundanity of life.

Joel Finch describes the process behind the album and breakdown of its contents:

Mirror Memorials is 6 songs broken into pairs and 3 songs that are interrelated. The pairs (Heads/Tails, Blank Space/Loose Nets, Live to Exercise/Exercise to Live) follow a point/counter-point format while Stage 1/Stage 2/Stage 3 follows a progression. Heads/Tails considers the tension between being trapped/isolated inside and being trapped outside with no house. Blank Space/Loose Nets focuses on the role devices play in our lives, both good and bad, destructive yet enabling. Live to Exercise/Exercise to Live is a straightforward comparison between the luxury of modern exercise and those that are caught in the modern labor market trying to compete with increasing levels of automation. Stage 1/2/3 is a projection of what an end of a life might feel like.

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