cherry glazerr

The dreams of the 90s are alive at Ideal Bar for Cherry Glazerr. The LA band, playing as a trio, are at the vanguard of 90s alt-rock revivalism. The audience are playing along, kitted out in a confusing assortment of retro fashions including but not limited to camisole dresses over t-shirts, hoop earrings in one ear, platform shoes, and pleather. 

The show was downsized from Lille Vega, which is only evident in the six-foot inflatable cherries stuffed at the back of the stage out of range of the lights. But this space feels right; there is a row of university-aged women lining the stage, losing their minds, dancing and singing throughout the set. The costuming of the audience further lends itself to the idea that this was somehow a secret, that only the kids from the counter-culture knew to come out for.

But it isn’t so esoteric as all that. Cherry Glazerr are a high energy rock band and they’re fun. Central to this fact is that frontwoman Clementine Creevy is a damn rockstar. She’s tossing her feathered blonde hair around, evoking the Runaway’s Cherie Currie. She bops and dinosaur walks around the stage throughout the set, feeding off the energy locked in around her.

The only time the band slow enough to catch their breath is to play “Grilled Cheese” and “Teenage Girl” from their debut album. While these older songs demonstrate how much tighter Creevy’s songwriting has gotten, the fact that the old songs are being played means the devotees in the front row are going crazy.

The one drawback of the evening is that Creevy’s vocals are almost non-existent. It’s not as though they dominate her albums, they are swallowed up despite the fact that the band isn’t playing especially loud. Creevy seems unbothered by this, so we can conclude that it’s a conscious if curious choice — she is, after all, a talented lyricist.

This choice does, however, work well for “Stupid Fish,” the end of the main set. The thin vocals from the album are swamped by the chugging rhythm of the song, which gets dragged out and mutated over the minutes. It’s more interesting for being a product of its environment, letting a song with heavy tone also get swept up in the fun of the evening.