Rat Race Review by JB Clark
I sit down and write whatever comes out for the first hour of the day when I’m healthy and today my thoughts on Rat Race came out as a formal review. I love it. Here is what I would say if I wrote for the Flyer. P.S., I fucking love it.
On Rat Race, Glamper is trying to navigate the years between action figures and middle age.
It's loose, a little heavier than you're expecting and a stripped down, honest look at a day in the life of millennial punks trying to have fun and make something in a world that's pretty shit.
It's the kind of record a bunch of East Nashville dudes would make if they were getting close to figuring this whole thing out when a pandemic shut the entire world down. It reminds me of the feeling I get when the power goes out and I step out of the matrix for a minute. When I find something I enjoy doing so much that when the power comes back on I don't get around to resetting the router.
It'll make you want to put on your headphones and wander around your neighborhood stoned, just like the lead single, "Snackworld" describes:
"I gotta tell you all about the time, I got so high I couldn't find my house. You found me."
I'm racking my brain to find comparison, but it's sort of its own thing. And still, it feels as lived in as the thread-bare shirt you still have from your college band.
It's punk, full of energy and only three songs clock in at more than three-and-a-half minutes. Even in the moments when energy dips, the stories are interesting enough to keep you locked in. They'll honestly stick with you for a couple of days — make you laugh like it was your own memory.
Those stories are little windows into both the mundane ("Fried Bologna") and profound ("Stay"), sometimes mixing the two like they do on "Take Your Cat Back" by focusing on the cat instead of the ex who left it there.
Stacked vocals that switch between lead singers from song to song make the whole thing feel like a group sing-along, like maybe you're going to get the mic for the next song. But don't worry, you already know the lyrics. You've been in the rat race your whole life.