I Will Remember You: A Brief Review Of The K Records Reissue Of Glimmer By Glo-Worm (Black Tambourine, The Saturday People, Etc.)

One of those truly timeless records for me, Glimmer by Glo-Worm is being reissued this week by Calvin Johnson's K Records. Sounding possibly even better than it already did, this compilation from the American indie super-group (of sorts) is still a delight. Even the Grinch's tiny heart would expand with a listen to this one.

Glo-Worm was Pam Berry (Black Tambourine), Terry Banks (St. Christopher, Tree Fort Angst), and Dan Searing (Whorl). Built around the pristine vocals of Pam, the tunes here are as light as air. While all three members had been in noisy bands, there's no shoegaze here. The DIY pop of Terry's Tree Fort Angst prefigured some of these hooks, but, with Pam's voice at the forefront, the music remains wonderfully within its own genre. The modest emotional push of numbers like "One Million Rainy Days" or "I Will Remember You" is in the service of a pervasive sense of nostalgia. Pam's vocals give these tracks a kind of wistfulness, as if each is a remembered composition being tried out again after many years never played. A few smartly-chosen covers ("Beyond the Sea", "Downtown", "Crazy Town", "Friday I'm in Love") add a wisp of playfulness to this.

With Terry's guitar and Dan's drums behind her, Pam soars on each number. For anyone who was a fan of Black Tambourine, this is a revelation. For those of us who were already Pam fans, this is another post-BT project where Pam's voice remains as hauntinly distinctive as always. The solid, simple hooks of these tunes, and the Sixties-inspired stuff like the "Downtown" cover point the way in a subtle fashion toward subsequent projects for Terry and Dan (The Saturday People). As a document of the peak years of the D.C. area's own indie boom, this is an invaluable collection. With the majority of this recorded by Archie Moore (Black Tambourine, Velocity Girl), these Glo-Worm songs retain a wonderful spark. There's nothing superfluous here, and with material so wonderfully direct and deceptively simple, the charms are obvious ones. I can't think of very many records from that era from this side of Atlantic that gave me as much pleasure as this one did in 1996. And, in this new edition, Glimmer has never sounded better.

Glimmer by Glo-Worm is out this week via K Records.

[Photo: Pat Graham]