A few kind words for Our Lady of the Broken Spine:
The album shows off a penchant for vividly drawn picaresque, unspooled by Glasseye's theatrical vocals - recalling both Nick Cave and the Decemberists. Glasseye makes good on the hype with endless inventiveness, remarkable musicianship, and dramatic sparkle. - Boston Globe
Melodramatic ballads - executed in Glasseye's signature post-punk vaudeville manner become minor-league classics of large-scale orchestration and country-goth glamour. - Paste Magazine
Our Lady of the Broken Spine. pits the evangelical fervor of singer Adam Glasseye up against mariachi brass and an accusatory Greek chorus." The Stranger
It's folk-touched but still raw and rocking, choatic energy, and solid songs; dark, yet uplifting and always intense. - Big Takeover
"Creepy and beguiling - like if Nick Cave had a Vegas act." - Nashville Rage
Bursting with an ingenious brilliance that elevates the status of the five-minutes song to high art, albeit high art created by ne'er-do-wells who sully the opera house stage with shit-covered shoes and whiskey on their breath. - F5
A hearty slab of praise for Reverend Glasseyes past efforts:
Idiosyncratic and creeping. A wiry, galloping ride through the infernal underbelly of gypsy cabaret.
- Boston MetroGlasseye plunders the past, turning an amalgamation of ethnic styles into a buzzing hive of American junkyard music. - Westword
Glasseyes style cant be boxed into a genre, but perhaps it is creating its own- a sort of evangelistic rock orchestra gone wrong. - Knoxville Metropulse
Gloomy Genius - Sponic
An American outfit that's conceptually based not so much on po'-but-proud sharecropping bluesmen or toothless banjo-pickin' coal miners but on huckstering carnies and snake oil salesmen.
- Chicago Reader
With catchy lyrics and a flair for high drama, the music is Delta blues, '60s burlesque, and the carnival, after dark. - Kitty Magik
Reverend Glasseye (has) a sound that can be revered by punkers, indie rockers, and country fans alike. - Illinois Entertainer
Modern folk rock at its finest. - Tablet
Old-timey-inspired, revivalist rock 'n' rollers whose sense of humor is eclipsed only by their uncanny ability to write a tune - truly a sight to see. - Detroit Metro Times
Adam and his eponymous Beantown band, Reverend Glasseye, have made broad swaths of dark American music, big-tent revivalism, and a general sense of joyful national doom-and-gloom their purveyance; from Appalachian banjo howl and old New England axe ballad (or both, on Sins of Portsmouth), moving westward, from sea to boiling sea. - Pittsburgh City Paper
.Yes but what about the Reverend!
Boston's Reverend Glasseye has often been labeled dark salvation music; cautionary tales filled with American superstition and human frailty performed with the pomp and production of an unclean orchestra. With their live performances, Reverend Glasseye has gained the reputation of being something of a spectacle, developing a cult-like following; a counter culture of well dressed, flower wielding celebrators who add as much fray as the bands intense fervor and off kilter musicality. Consider this post romantic revivalist glam, or perhaps simply gospel cabaret punk.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Curious World of Reverend Glasseye.
Their debut release, Black River Falls was warmly welcomed by press and radio alike; ranking number seven on CMJ's most added list and claiming a spot on the Top 200 for six weeks. The album has gone on to sell thousands of copies worldwide, creating an international underground following, and has been honored with accolades from the Boston Music Awards, Boston Phoenix awards, Performing Songwriter Monthly and the CBC to name several. Reverend Glasseye's second release, Happy End and Begin was released in the Fall of 2004 on Ottawa's Music For Cats Records, to critical praise and quickly went on to become the label's top seller. Recently, Reverend Glasseye won Boston's most prestigious battle of the bands, WBCN's Rock and Roll Rumble. The bands increasing tour schedule has packed venues from Boston to Los Angeles, Missoula to Ottawa and has granted the band performances with the likes of Rasputina, Gogol Bordello, Sex Mob, The World Famous Pontani Sisters, The Legendary Shack Shakers, and the Dresden Dolls.
Reverend Glasseyes latest full-length, Our Lady of the Broken Spine, was released in November of 2005 on Music For Cats Records. It has since been warmly received by such members of the fourth estate as The Onion's A/V Club and Paste Magazine
