In the ever-present grind of the chaotic modern world, Glass sympathizes with listeners going through the struggle.

There is a ton of rage one can internalize over a bad situation. Stretch out that timeline, and what one ends up with is a rough gallery of emotions, swelled up and eager to bite. Alicia Glass, a newly-minted rock artist out of Durango, Colorado, does a phenomenal job of encapsulating those feelings and situations in her October debut, the Close/Open EP.

Over the four tracks, there is a silent screaming toxicity, not necessarily from the artist, but from the situations and happenings that can pull us under, and the songs here are the revolt at the end of the cycle.

Kicking off the record, “Bad Friend” is jilted and jaded, with the figure at the center succumbing to her own negativity and influences. There’s an apathy tinged throughout the soulful vocals Glass puts so much power into that is palatable, giving a haunting quality to a perspective of how even knowing why we do things sometimes doesn’t help deviate from certain actions. Not necessarily a vouching for, but more an “is what it is” type of telling.

“Trailer Park Queen” is a bit softer of a track, as far as instrumentals. The lyrics speak to much of what Glass seems to feel and perceive, caught in a situation that seems inescapable, again commenting on her sad state of affairs before ending the song, reprising through wails to her audience, “I just want to be free”.

One of the standout tracks, “I Live In The Garage”, hits harder rock notes throughout as Glass splits between storytelling and song lyrics. There is a narrative Glass uses for the beginning, loosely based on a friend’s real experience, where a neighbor tries to encroach on, in the song’s variant, Glass’s living situation as she’s trying to eat, sparking a backlash that is both humorous and all too familiar. Between the spoken words at both the back and front, the singer lays out issues like a laundry list, and in a the tight economy we live in, there is much to relate to within the verses.

“Three dollars on a coffee adds up/Yeah, that’s why I can’t get ahead/when I worked 70 hours last week/still can’t afford my rent/my car keeps breaking down/third time this week/I just keep couching it up/takes three extra hours on the bus/time is money and there’s never enough/”

The biggest gut punch, however, comes in from “Burrito”. There is a strong feeling of tired aggravation that pops in all over the EP, filtered differently for each song, but “Burrito”, right next to “I Live In The Garage”, holds very little back. The stress off the vocals builds up on each set of verses, almost to the point that there seems to be an audible pleading in Glass’s voice. There is a line that is repeated differently in the second verse set, “half the lights are burned out/and so am I.”

Once heard, I was shaken and immediately felt an overwhelming desire to scream, “Me too.” “Burrito” depicts stress at its peak, causing for the listener a variety of feelings, from empathy to sympathy, and also solidarity. For anyone who has ever been at wits’ end, ending up riled over sleepless nights with days being practically on edge, this song carries like a flare up in the sky, trying to find help and relief but getting none.

For her debut mini-collection, Alicia Glass knocks it out of the park with her ability to reach well beyond her words into the audience’s pain. However, it isn’t in a way that seems overly emotional, instead coming in like a close friend trying to tell you what is going on, sounding so familiar that it might as well be the two parties sitting outside for a smoke.

Punishing, powerful, but honest in a way that is engaging, and in a manner that allows listeners to scream, cry, and laugh at the madness of it all. By the end of the EP, listeners will feel like they’d gotten a lot out of their system, ready to tackle it all again, but hopefully find the freedom to shake off what’s been ailing them. Close/Open is a set of songs that I know I can turn to if I just need something to relate to after fighting so hard to carry on in the worst of times, and Glass will be there to empathize with the storm of bullshit our daily lives can sometimes become.

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