Exploring Old Smile's 'Glued'

One of the most beguiling phenomenons to emerge over the past decade is the wildly creative and extensive catalog of Old Smile. The moniker of the elusive New Jersey artist Tom Herman Jr. — the evocative wonder-walls of sound sing testaments of personal meditations, thought streams arranged into feasts of deep sensory and sentiments cleverly adapted into psychotropic landscapes of healing, mourning and realizations of sublime understanding (beyond the finite constructs of mortality). A mighty singular vision and delivery mastered by Holy Tapes' Nicholas Bolton; Herman's latest foray into long playing landscapes Glued offers an experience that can only begin to be described as an out of body sort of event (to say the least).

Glued let's the sun light in like an open window letting the blue sky drip in like melted iced cream or psychedelic sno-cones liquefying in the sun with "Outside the Window". Tom's knack for making time tripping, grand scale sonic tapestries are something akin to long lost Tim Presley tapes or esoteric acetate hymns forgotten in the hallowed halls of the Drag City archives. Smart subterranean journeys are witnessed on the percussive simmer of "Underneath the Chatter", to orchestrating an entire mountain gazing piece of understated might and majesty on the glowing "Luminous Hill". The strong sense of catharsis at work can be felt on "Dancing With Grief", where Herman channels inexplicable sentiments of immense loss along with the struggles of our current era into a mini rock opera that quite possibly manages to outdo the psychedelic 60s themselves.

The record as a whole feels something like a home beset with with life's burdens and besieged on all fronts from the world in the grips of a pandemic, economic near-collapse and subsequent work force woes. "In the Attic" takes a moody trip to the cryptic places of the mind's memory storage spaces, to turning up the electric fuzz pedals on the cool sweet slick and sick sonic chapel quantification of quandaries with "Where Will You Turn?", right before retreating to the vast, pensive pools on the generative "Fertile Ground". Old Smile draws you deep into the production, like "Blank Page" allows you to literally fall into the tabula rasa canvas and and become part of the story on the page, as the tone becomes increasingly devastating on the tension building "Draining Sensation", to long walks out into the pastures of maudlin psych pop with "The Herder". Glued showcases the unlimited possibilities and prowess of the solo artist. Herman completes the record full circle with the final couplet of "Fire Arrow" and the title track — aiming first for an inferno of feelings that charges into the ferocity of flames before leaving the audience with a surreal lullaby that feels like the entirety of the world is hovering in a gentle sway above you. Old Smile has made a record where the world feels as much around you, as well as stored deep within the wells of the body and soul.

Old Smile’s own Tom Herman Jr. was kind enough to share some personal and creative reflections about the inception of Glued and more:

I began working on the album in late April after leaving a warehouse job where COVID was spreading. I finished it in August. Mortality was on my mind while recording this. My mom passed away in December from cancer. I don’t really know how to write about how much it hurts but it’s been tough. The process of making music helped me cope with losing my mom and with that feeling of dread about the state of the world. I hadn’t picked up an instrument since the previous August so I felt a little rusty at first.

The way I recorded most of the album was by using drums I had recorded in 2018 and mixing them along with Casio keyboard drums/programmed drums. I used that as the foundation then I would add bass/guitar/keys direct, usually through a couple different pedals. I didn’t have the songs planned out or anything beforehand. I just used recording as sort of a songwriting tool which allowed me to sort of improvise the songs as I went. This process was important because it allowed me to kind of get out of my own head. The song “Glued”, which the album is named after, was made from a cassette I recorded when I was around sixteen years old which goes back seventeen years now. I found one of the songs on the cassette I wasn’t embarrassed by and added vocals/did some new mixing to it.

That’s how the song “Glued” came about. I’ve been attached to making music for years and years now. The amount of time I’ve been doing it really hit me when I found that cassette. The other songs on the album weren’t made that way but the whole experience of finding that cassette which I thought was long gone and hearing that it still sounded good made me think of withstanding the wear and tear of life.

Glued is available now via Bandcamp and everywhere.

Glued cover art by Miles Wintner.