In 2019 Glass Beach released their debut LP The First Glass Beach Album, a feat of emo maximalism that earned the quartet a Band To Watch accolade from frequent Stereogum contributor Ian Cohen. In 2024, Glass Beach re-emerged with their also-excellent sophomore album Plastic Death, but now, it turns out The Last Glass Beach Album would've been a fitting title too. Bandleader J McClendon, who'd already been releasing some solo material as Casio Dad, quietly unveiled a new album called It's Fine To Dream earlier this year. It's her debut album under her new moniker You Are An Angel, and also serves as additional confirmation that Glass Beach is done.
McClendon spoke to Cohen again for the latter's Something On Substack, giving her first official post-Glass Beach interview in a conversation published today (on her own blog, McClendon also unpacks the backstory of each song on It's Fine To Dream). COVID, it turns out, really hindered Glass Beach's ability to function as a touring band; drummer William White came down with a bad case of the virus that left them unable to play live shows. At first, Glass Beach quietly went on hiatus, with McClendon continuing to write music on her own. Then, her childhood best friend and onetime bandmate Margaret Christinson suddenly died of suicide.
"A lot of the new stuff I was writing was a way to process the grief that I was going through and also a tribute, not just to my friend Maggie, but to that whole period of my life," McClendon explains. "A lot of the artistic choices that I was making took me back to the days when I was in Texas or doing Casio Dad or The First Glass Beach Album — the chiptune and ska influences that I could talk myself out of liking at some point. I let myself be more deliberately uncool and hearkening back to this older period in my life, because it was so wrapped up in my love for my friends who knew me back then."
So far, It's Fine To Dream is sounding scrappier and punkier than Plastic Death or The First Glass Beach Album, but it still has all the ultra-detailed songwriting and broad spectrum of influences that Glass Beach fans will recognize and appreciate. All of McClendon's Glass Beach bandmates contribute to the album, too, and one song — the brilliantly-titled "escape your hometown by any means necessary" — is a fleshed-out version of a demo Christinson had written. Listen to It's Fine To Dream below.
