Crystal Ballroom presents
Fievel Is Glauque
Tickets on sale Friday, August 18th at 10am
Fievel Is Glauque’s rising popularity has been as organic as it has been accidental. An international band composed of American bandleading pianist Zach Phillips, French singer Ma Clément, and a rotating cast of musicians spread out across the globe, they released a Bandcamp compilation album of live mono cassette recordings titled God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess on New Years Day of 2021 with only a single Instagram post to promote it.
Similar to most releases you might find from Zach Phillips’ former label OSR Tapes or his approximately fifty other albums under various names (ex. Blanche Blanche Blanche, Perfect Angels), it received some cult fandom, but Fievel Is Glauque was pushed to a larger audience through a Bandcamp Daily article.
Gradually, through word of mouth, God’s Trashmen Sent To Right The Mess has gone on to sell thousands of copies, and the band’s reach has continued to grow, leading them to tour the US alongside Stereolab, with Stereogum also proclaiming Fievel Is Glauque as “one of the most singular and inspiring new bands in the world”. All of this, ahead of any proper studio recordings.
Fievel Is Glauque shared their debut studio album Flaming Swords last Fall on MATH Interactive. The album received glowing praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Paste, and The Fader. On August 15th, 2023, the band released a standalone A / B single I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See / Dark Dancing, alongside a music video for both songs and the announcement of their signing to Fat Possum. Both new songs were written and recorded in April 2023 by Zach Phillips and Ma Clément during a writing trip for the band, quickly captured in analog on a Tascam 424 Portastudio. These ‘demos’ were meant to capture the moment of creation, with the later intention to rework these compositions as full band recordings. Although the band is conservative about releasing from their now-voluminous library of hundreds of songs recorded in the studio, in rehearsals, and in multitrack demos like these, they felt these two recordings captured the raw life of the compositions as they were being written.