Merciful Heavens – For Now
Get Loud – 1 October 2021
Former frontman with Austin outfit Good Looks, Christian Glakas makes his solo debut under his new project name Merciful Heavens with this six-track alt-country mini-album. ‘For Now’ is partly inspired by having lost a succession of friends all too soon and gets underway with the steady chugging summery mid-70s desert baked pop Apples (as in how do you like them…). The song addresses pain and loss (“Someone’s caught in the gloom/Of a dark and empty room/Someone’s seen a ghost that’s here to stay”) and of its acknowledgement of mortality (“Even shiny buildings rust/I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”).
Up next, Underground is musically hazed melancholic musing on feeling enervated, built around the phrase “Nothing’s wrong I’m just so tired” and fuzzed guitar notes. Meanwhile, the lazing, walking rhythm, countrified title track offers a reflection on change, both personal (“my freewheelin’ days are done, for now”) and of the country (“the president’s a piece of shit”).
Built around a dreamily finger-picked acoustic guitar, the stand-out Where The Rising Sun Will Find You again concerns loss (“No one but a slave would say it’s easy to just walk away from what you spent the last two decades building/What beast would pull you from your home? Would you abandon all you’ve known for sirens songs? Promises? Children?”), but shimmers with acceptance (“I will be your memory, your conscience and your sympathy”) and the hope of rising from the ruins as he sings:
I’ll write you poems and burn them all, I’ll argue with the wailing wall, I’ll triumph with my wisdom and my tongue.
I’ll try and be like normal folk and smile when I hear a joke and contemplate the arias unsung/I’ll hear the rain and thunder too, and innocently wonder who will be the one to capture and unwind you.
I’ll cut the lights and go to sleep and dream of shadows dark and deep and wonder where the rising sun will find you.
There’s a hint of a sandy voiced Elliot Smith to the penultimate Inside Out, another midtempo number about nagging self-doubt (“the voices, piping up again/Saying that I’m among the all-time great disappointments/A point I find astute that I can’t quite refute… I lost my shit and now I’m peeled inside out”) and trying to reconnect with yourself (“your baby’s in here somewhere, I know”) backdropped by organ lines and a clopping drumbeat. The album ends on Fluid Days, a bright shuffling, guitar chiming instrumental that, in contrast to the downbeat lyrics, encapsulates the hope and redemption which he’s been working towards.
It’s a tentative start in striking out on his own, and it’ll be interesting to see how he develops, but this will most certainly do nicely for now.
Order via Bandcamp: https://mercifulheavens.bandcamp.com/releases