The Glass Family

The Glass Family

Sleep Inside This Wheel (I Eat Records)

Michael Winningham has an honest voice: a little downtrodden, a little uneasy, but mostly optimistic. The Glass Family's debut LP is a throwback to the days when indie rock wasn't so complicated. Remember when you had never heard the phrase "dance-punk" or "post-rock"? The Glass Family aren't New Wave, either, nor alt.country, punk rock, or emo. And yet, they're as familiar as a favorite sweatshirt, a worn-in pair of jeans, or those ancient Converse. Following the two-minute dream-state intro, Winningham brings Great Expectations through the spring with "Stop Dead in Your Tracks." The lonesome Manhattan summers of J.D. Salinger's namesake come alive in "Bad News," a cavernous ode to empty promises. The scene changes dramatically with the gallop of "Swimming in Fiction": "Crawl if you can," Winningham urges determinedly. The ebbs and flows of "Stolen Art" mirror the title track, but album highlight and closer "There's a Red Light Waiting for You" pulses with Wilconian expectation. With a Spoonful of hope, the Glass Family envelopes the great unifiers, and if their recent live shows are any prediction, expect greatness from the local fivepiece. With Sleep Inside This Wheel, they have achieved total evolution.