Gliss @ The Khyber

Gliss
@ The Khyber
5/05/09
www.myspace.com/gliss

Within minutes, the band managed to clear a room of part-time pop punkers and produce something resembling a lonely night at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Lean bodies in striped shirts swayed with reckless abandon to the morbidly chic sound of LA’s Gliss. With their electronics jacked the previous day in Jersey, the band’s set tended toward the lo-fi portion of their catalogue. Without their signature gloom pop that falls somewhere between Placebo and Kill Hannah, Gliss sounded more like the Dandy Warhols as a tribute to The Cure. The majority of the performance was comprised of tracks from their latest release, Devotion Implosion, highlighted by older material, such as the elegant sass of “Blue Sky” and the dark, erotic drones of “Kick in Your Heart.” Unfortunately, the band’s stage presence lacked the swagger of their sound, yet that could be chalked up to the previous day’s occurrences in New Jersey… or just having to have been in New Jersey. Izzy Cihak