Glaive’s anthemic debut album is a raw and honest pop-rock riot | The Cover | NME.com
Glaive (2023) Sam Keeler
Glaive’s anthemic debut album is a raw and honest pop-rock riot
The North Carolina-born artist started making music during the pandemic’s darkest days. Now, the 18-year-old’s accomplished full-length collection touches on his mental health, sexuality and more
“There’s no fucking lying on this album,” says 18-year-old producer, vocalist and songwriter , “I really kept it real”, he adds. The North Carolina-born artist – real name Ash Gutierrez – is speaking to from his New York hotel following our rooftop photoshoot in the city for this week’s . The imminent release of debut album is taking him to some lofty heights, but he’s much more focused with staying close to earth, it seems.
It’s been a rapid journey, having clocked up more than 100 million streams since breaking through in 2020. After teaching himself to produce music at the start of the pandemic, it wasn’t long before the “shy and quiet” then-15-year-old started making and releasing songs made in his bedroom.
Glaive on The Cover of NME. Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
Bored and isolated in the remote mountains of Hendersonville, a city with a population of just 15,000, Gutierrez casually uploaded angst-y tracks like ‘Astrid’ to SoundCloud under the alias of Glaive (a name taken from the video game Dark Souls III). In 2021, his ‘All Dogs Go To Heaven’ EP received five-stars from NME, describing it as “a remarkable indication of the directions glaive could go in next: all of them.”
Underground notoriety followed and, alongside 100 gecs and teenage peers ericdoa, midwxst and aldn, he became a leader of the burgeoning US hyperpop scene. The internet-born microgenre, known for its fusion of glitchy electronic maximalism and distorted bass, grew from a DIY online community to become one of the most talked-about sounds. Its sonic origins stretch back to the mid-2010s and the early bubblegum-pop releases of A. G. Cook, PC Music and SOPHIE and their subsequent amped-up collaborations with Charli XCX.
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
After hyperpop found a global audience via TikTok during the lockdown years, the wider music industry started taking notice – Glaive and the new wave of the scene went mainstream, transcending beyond the URL world. Such a meteoric rise saw Gutierrez head to Los Angeles for recording sessions, sign to major label Interscope (Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish), tour Europe and the UK with The Kid LAROI, collaborate with Machine Gun Kelly and release two EPs. Having also taught himself to play guitar, by this point he had transitioned from being a “faux musician” into something more serious. A rapid rise, then.
Full of teenage angst, anxiety, and existential uncertainty, ‘I Care So Much…’ (out now) finds Gutierrez at his most honest and open. Having wanted to replicate the environment in which he made his first songs, Gutierrez headed to a windowless garage studio in LA last summer. “I really don’t like making music in any place other than my bedroom, and this was the closest we could get,” he says before detailing his daily routine. Recording sessions would begin at 5pm and finish the following day at 10am with Gutierrez curled up on the carpet. Wake up, hop in the shower, back at it: lather, rinse, repeat.
“I’ve never put out something that is so true to myself”
That lifestyle left him burnt-out, and Gutierrez soon found himself taking a more introspective approach to songwriting. “After a while, I just had nothing to fucking talk about,” he says, having recorded 50 potential album tracks with producer Jeff Hazin. “The goal was never to make an album where I talk about myself and how I view myself in the world, but that’s just how it panned out.” Delving deeper than before resulted in his debut becoming self-evaluative – purely because nothing crazy was happening in Gutierrez’s present. “There was no other way to get there except by looking at myself and asking ‘what’s up with this guy?’”
Making the record became a form of self-therapy for Gutierrez, who describes himself as “the most emotional man in the world. I feel a lot of things.” Channelling his range of feelings into music has always been a part of his artistry, but this collection felt different. “Not to say that I wasn’t making honest music before, but I just didn’t know how to enunciate it in a way that I feel like I do now… I’ve always been trying to say these things, but I just didn’t know how.”
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
Take the stirring opener ‘Oh Are You Bipolar One Or Two’, which transitions from soft piano to stadium-sized drums and raw emotions. That track’s creation followed “the most adult year in my life”, Gutierrez says, adding that writing it helped him process his own diagnosis. “I don’t want to be here at fucking all, I wonder if tomorrow would’ve been better? In all honesty, it don’t even matter at all”, he asks in the song. Later, he similarly recounts suicidal thoughts on the heart-wrenching title track.
“I was overthinking and over-analysing everything all the time,” he says. Since, however, Gutierrez’s outlook on life has changed. “I’m more conscious that I’m an actual existing human being,” he says. “When you’re 16, you’re not really thinking that – you’re just going through life seeing what’s happening.”
“I’ve always been trying to say these things, but didn’t know how”
This honesty saw Gutierrez open up about his bisexuality to his fans. Having recently come out in an Instagram Live video, he retrospectively thinks that he “probably built it up and was more nervous about it than I should have been”. However, Gutierrez makes it clear that he has no intention of talking about it more in anything other than songs.
“It’s just the truth,” he says. “I’m not trying to turn it into a commodifiable part of myself,” he adds. “Like it or dislike it how the fuck you want. It’s not gonna change…” Being part of a musical community that has long been a refuge for a queer artists, Gutierrez says that his fans have similarly been incredibly supportive.
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
In keeping with his newly-reached maturity, Gutierrez also wanted one song on the record to start off quiet and “almost like talking”. This led to him sampling part of Timothée Chalamet’s monologue from the off-Broadway play Prodigal Son, which was one of the Hollywood hearthrob’s first roles. “Why do I have to listen to you when you have zero to say? Because I’m young? All my life I’ve been young So I never get a turn!” Chalamet shouts frustratedly on the track ‘As If’, which ends with him assuring “I’m gonna find my place in this world, count on it”. It’s a narrative and belief that chimes with Gutierrez’s own.
“It took so fucking long to get this six second monologue,” Gutierrez laughs. The sample had to be cleared by Timothée’s team, the playwright and the play’s publishing house. “But I think it’s worth it,” he adds, describing Chalamet as “the most interesting and famous young male actor right now”. To Gutierrez’s disappointment, they’re yet to meet but he wants to link up with Chalamet and, er, slight doppelganger Finn Wolfhard “so bad. I need a picture with those two, I think it’d be beautiful!”
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
The album serves as a sonic departure from Gutierrez’s early releases. While his debut EPs thrived on glitchy electronic synths, his pop-rock sound has now elevated thanks to pounding drums and stadium-sized singalong choruses. Influenced by a wide scope of artists and sounds – ranging from Modern Baseball, The 1975, Bon Iver and recently discovering ABBA’s back catalogue – Gutierrez’s current music taste is built on a mix of electronic music and sad acoustic guitar songs.
Fusing elements of indie, pop, rock and emo, many of the album’s tracks sound like they were made to be performed live, for example ‘The Car’, whose fuzzy, feedback-heavy guitars add to the song’s anthemic energy. Similarly, Gutierrez is levelling up the production for his upcoming tour. Previously, his gigs have had more in common with rap shows, consisting of Gutierrez jumping around energetically while singing to backing tracks; when he hits the road in the US and UK from the end of this month, he’ll have a full band including live guitar and drums.
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
Despite this move away from hyperpop – a genre that Gutierrez told NME “would never die” – his long-time affiliation with the scene might mean the connection never drops. While in the past, this used to bother Gutierrez, he’s now indifferent to genre descriptors. “At first I was really upset that people were giving my music a genre, and I’ve gone through different phases,” he says.
Going on to discuss the evolution of hyperpop, he suggests that it’s now harder to tell what hyperpop actually is because of the term’s commercialisation and the music’s consequent homogenisation. “Everyone had an idea of what a stereotypical hyperpop song sounded like and I don’t listen to that kind of music anymore, because a lot of it isn’t very inspired,” Gutierrez says. He also suggests that some newer artists are “trying to make hyperpop purely for monetary or societal gain”.
Credit: Sam Keeler for NME
Contrastingly, Gutierrez and friends from the hyperpop scene that he came up with have naturally developed their sound over time. “We’re all busier, but we make time for each other where we can,” Gutierrez says of his pals midwxst, ericdoa and aldn. “It’s very easy to be friends with people who have had similar experiences to you,” he adds. “I love those boys!”
He continues: “I’m not trying to make any specific type of music, I’m just trying to make music that is honest.” If that was his aim, ‘I Care So Much…’ is an undeniable triumph. “I’ve never put out something that is so true to myself, and I’ve not felt that with any of my other music,” Gutierrez says. “It’s scary as fuck and I’ve never been this scared for stuff to come out. But what I do know is that I want to do this forever.”
Glaive’s debut album ‘I Care So Much That I Don’t Care At All’ is out now via Interscope
Listen to Glaive’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify, and here on Apple Music
Words: Ben David Jolley
Photography: Sam Keeler
Label: Interscope
Mgmt: Dan Awad / Chris Begler
