Soul Glimmer Burns Brighter the Second Time Around

The once-forgotten Greenwich Village duo returns with long songs, strange harmonies, absolutely no interest in brevity, and one surprisingly beautiful moon.

LIVE REVIEW
Soul Glimmer
The Bitter End, New York City
Summer 1991

By the time Soul Glimmer finished its third song Thursday night, the band had been onstage for nearly 40 minutes.

This was not because of technical difficulties.

Soul Glimmer is a two-man jam band, and if Eric and Greg have learned anything during their long, strange trip through the New York music scene, it is apparently that a song should end only when absolutely everyone involved has made peace with the decision.

For the sold-out crowd packed into the Bitter End, that was surprisingly good news.

Nine years after Soul Glimmer seemed destined to become one of those bands remembered mostly by the people who insist you really should have seen them back in the day, Eric and Greg have found their way back to each other. More importantly, they seem to have figured out what kind of band they were supposed to be in the first place.

The answer is weird.

It is also occasionally wonderful.

A Band That Refuses to Hurry

Soul Glimmer first appeared on the downtown scene in the early ’80s, playing small rooms and chasing an audience at precisely the wrong moment for two guys interested in extended guitar solos, earnest harmonies, and songs about landscapes.

By 1982, the project had collapsed.

Greg reportedly wanted to keep going. Eric, tired of rejection, walked away from music and landed in advertising, eventually finding himself at Saatchi & Saatchi. It could have ended there, with one half of Soul Glimmer writing copy and the other presumably explaining to increasingly patient bartenders that the band just needed the right room.

Instead, Eric came back.

Watching them now, it is hard not to think the time apart helped.

Soul Glimmer’s live show has very little polish, but there is an ease between the two men that cannot be manufactured. Greg tends to push songs outward, stretching riffs until they nearly come apart. Eric pulls them back toward melody. At several points Thursday night, the two seemed to communicate almost entirely through prolonged eye contact.

Sometimes it was musical chemistry.

Sometimes it looked like an argument being conducted in the key of D.

Either way, it worked.

Then Came “Ontario Moon”

The set wandered freely between folk, rock, psychedelic noodling, and the kind of sincere acoustic introspection that usually requires at least one audience member to close his eyes and sway very seriously.

Then Soul Glimmer played “Ontario Moon.”

And suddenly the room changed.

The song is simple by the band’s standards, built around a warm guitar progression and a chorus that repeats the title with such complete sincerity that it probably should not work.

It does.

There is something oddly moving about hearing two men who have already watched their musical dream fall apart sing about a distant moon hanging above a place neither of them can quite reach.

Maybe that is giving the song too much credit.

Maybe it is literally about the moon in Ontario.

With Soul Glimmer, both explanations seem equally possible.

But Thursday night, “Ontario Moon” became the reason to believe this reunion might be more than nostalgia. The endless solos disappeared. The joking stopped. Eric and Greg locked into a harmony that was rough around the edges but completely unguarded.

For four minutes, the strangest band in Greenwich Village sounded like the only band that mattered.

Then Greg launched into another guitar solo.

Naturally.

Soul Glimmer Is Not for Everyone

Some people will hate this band.

That is not speculation.

A couple near the bar left during an especially ambitious instrumental section that appeared to end three separate times before simply continuing. One man spent much of the second half staring at his watch, growing increasingly concerned.

Soul Glimmer does not seem particularly worried about those people.

There is something refreshing about that.

This is not a band chasing whatever programmers think might work on radio this month. Eric and Greg are not trying to become grunge before grunge fully knows what it is, and they are certainly not sanding down their stranger instincts in search of a three-minute single.

They are playing exactly the music they want to play.

Occasionally, you may wish they wanted to play slightly less of it.

But that stubbornness is also part of the appeal.

The Second Chance Sounds Better

The best reunions are not attempts to recreate something that used to work. They are opportunities to figure out why it did not work the first time.

Soul Glimmer still rambles. The songs still take scenic routes. Eric and Greg remain dangerously comfortable with the idea that any musical thought worth having is probably worth having for another six minutes.

But underneath it all is something unexpectedly sincere.

These are two musicians who tried this once, failed, went separate ways, and somehow found their way back into the same room.

There are easier ways to spend your thirties.

There are certainly more profitable ones.

But as the final notes of “Ontario Moon” faded and the crowd demanded one more song, Eric looked across the stage at Greg and grinned.

Greg grinned back.

Then they started playing again.

Twenty-two minutes later, they finally stopped.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Best moment: “Ontario Moon”
Most accurate description: Two men, two guitars, several unresolved feelings
Bring earplugs: Probably
Bring a watch: Absolutely not

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