Glare – Sunset Funeral

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a big shoegazer at heart. It’s my go to music and over the years I’ve really refined my taste in gaze to the heavier side of things. The mountains of fuzz wall of sound kinda gaze. You’ll understand why I was beaming ear to ear when I dropped the needle on Glares debut album Sunset Funeral for the first time.

Let’s pump the brakes here and just introduce the band to you. Glare are from Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley where heat seems to melt sightlines. They arrived quietly in 2017 with “Into Me” and “Blank” then gifted us the Heavenly EP in 2021. In April this year they dropped Sunset Funeral after teasing us with “Mourning Haze” back in August last year. Toni Ordaz sings and plays guitar. Cesar Izzy Izaguirre also plays guitar. Homero Solis anchors things on bass and Jes Morales drives the drums.

The bands promo tells us this about the album.

This is going to be an emotional journey for sure, let’s get this on the turntable.

We kick off with the lead single ‘Mourning Haze’. What hits you immediately is a mood, a feeling. The guitars glide from grunged out fuzz to dreamy chimes. From the first second, you are in Glare’s world. The drums keep a steady, almost hypnotic pulse while bass hums low and constant, a dark river beneath the swirl. Vocals sit back in the mix, blurred just enough to make them feel like part of the weather rather than a separate element. Every chord change carries weight, not in a showy way but in how it subtly shifts your emotional footing. One moment you feel the grime under your fingernails, the next you’re staring into soft light breaking through cloud, almost like the waves of grief you feel.

‘Kiss the Sun’ next keeps that dynamic going, although this time it’s the vocals in the driving seat. The droning guitars support the melody rather than drive it. The vocal delivery is more forward here, gliding above the haze with a clarity that catches you off guard after the opener. The phrasing is unhurried, each line allowed to hang in the air before the next arrives. Guitars act almost like a backdrop rather than a focal point, a long-sustained shimmer that feels infinite. There’s a warmth to this track that contrasts with the opener’s grit. It still exists in that same heavy-gaze universe, but the emphasis shifts to how melody can cut through the density without breaking its spell.

We’re into ‘Saudade’ next and the fuzz curtain is pulled back to reveal a dreamier side of the bands sound in the intro. The opening is almost weightless, the guitars bright and airy, as if they’ve stepped into a room filled with light after two tracks spent in shadow. That is short lived. Within seconds the distortion swells, swallowing the edges and dragging us back into the thick of it. It’s a push and pull that feels deliberate, a reminder that moments of clarity can be fleeting when grief is the undercurrent. The vocal never rises to match the storm, which is what makes it so affecting. It’s the calm inside the chaos. It’s the balance of beauty and abrasion that makes ‘Saudade’ one of the record’s most quietly devastating moments.

That Philly edge shows again on ‘2 Soon 2 Tell’. The feedback squawks, like punctuation, pepper the chorus whilst the calm of the verses draws you in closer. There’s a rawness in the way the guitars spit and squeal between vocal lines, a reminder of Glare’s hardcore-adjacent roots. Those bursts of noise don’t dominate so much as accent the emotional spikes, giving the choruses a jagged frame. The verses, by contrast, are stripped back just enough to let the bass and drums carry the weight. The drumming is precise but never rigid, leaving space for the vocals to float across the top without losing momentum. It’s a clever bit of dynamic control. The track moves between restraint and release without feeling disjointed, and the moments of feedback almost act like a knowing wink to fans of heavier shoegaze in the Nothing or Whirr vein. You get that grit, but you also get melody and poise.

‘Chlorinehouse’ feels like what would happen if you merged a Cure and Nothing track. The guitars really dig in and bite but the bass has this ethereal quality that ultimately is the backbone of the whole song. The interplay is hypnotic. The guitar tones are sharp enough to cut through the mix, each chord landing with purpose, yet they’re wrapped in enough reverb to keep the edges from feeling harsh. Meanwhile, the bass is painting the atmosphere. The notes bloom and hang in the air, creating a ghostly undercurrent that the rest of the band builds on. There’s a sense of slow, deliberate movement here, as if each section is carefully considered before it arrives. By the end, you’re left in that sweet spot where heaviness and delicacy meet, unsure whether you want to come up for air or stay submerged.

We fade into a short tone poem next with ‘Felt’. Lots of reverse guitar tones over a gentle wash of static. It’s barely more than a minute, but it shifts the mood completely. The reversed notes feel like fragments of a dream playing backwards, moments you’re trying to remember but can’t quite hold onto. There’s no percussion, no obvious structure, just an atmosphere that lingers for a breath before dissolving. It’s gone quickly, but its ghost stays with you into the next track.

Next up is the smooth sound of ‘Nü Burn’. The fuzz has been dialled back here to allow the drums to really go to town. They take full advantage of the space, laying down a driving beat that gives the track an almost rolling momentum. It’s the most rhythm-forward moment so far, and that shift in focus changes the way the whole band feels. The guitars still shimmer and snarl in places, but they’re more restrained, leaving room for the percussion to push and pull at the pace. There’s still weight in the mix, but it’s carried differently. Instead of a wall of sound pressing in, ‘Nü Burn’ lets you ride on top of it, carried along by the steady drive of the drums. By the end, it feels less like an interlude and more like a turning point.

We feel like we are soaring next as ‘Turquoise Dreams’ blooms on the speakers. Rhythm guitar drives the song forward but it’s the vocals that dictate the tone. There’s a lift in the opening bars as the guitars lock into a fluid, almost wave-like motion. They keep the momentum going, but it’s the vocals that shapes the emotional weather. The interplay between guitar and vocal feels almost conversational. The instruments set the pace, and the voice colours in the mood, giving the track its soft, upward pull. By the time the song opens up in its final moments, you’re fully inside its turquoise haze!

‘Guts’ is centred around a killer vocal melody that is mirrored by a guitar line that fills in the spaces. It’s one of the album’s most immediate hooks, the kind that feels etched into your head after a single listen. The way the guitar shadows the vocal phrasing gives the song a tight cohesion, like the melody and instrumentation are breathing in unison. There’s a satisfying rub in the arrangement too. The rhythm section keeps things steady, almost understated, so that every shift in the guitar’s tone or vocal inflection lands with extra impact. The distortion here isn’t too dense, certainly not overpowering, letting the melody shine through without losing the record’s heavy-gaze character. The drums pound out an almost hypnotic beat at times taking full advantage of the gaps to bring something really interesting to the table. ‘Guts’ manages to balance sweetness and grit in equal measure, making it one of the tracks that best encapsulates the tension running through Sunset Funeral.

If this album has a ballad, or as close to damn it as you can get, it’s ‘Sungrave’. It’s luxurious in tone and feel. Guitars taking their time, slow and languid. The vocal delivery is tender but distant, as though singing from another room, the sound spilling in softly through the doorway. There’s a patience to the whole arrangement, no rush to build, no urgency to break into distortion. When the fuzz does arrive, it’s more like a warm blanket than a sudden jolt, wrapping around the song without smothering it. When it does arrive, the drums come in and by God are they heavy. Just so satisfying. ‘Sungrave’ feels like the exhale after a long, heavy breath. It’s intimate yet expansive, a reminder that even in a record this dense, Glare know how to slow the heartbeat without losing the emotional weight.

The album comes to a close with ‘Different Hue’ which has an acoustic guitar swathed in trilling electric strums. That acoustic foundation feels almost fragile after the layers of distortion that came before, but it’s not exposed for long. The electric textures wrap around it, spiralling in soft, chiming patterns that give the song a gentle sense of motion. There’s a brightness here, but it’s the kind that comes at the end of a long day. The vocals sit closer to the front than on most of the record, carrying a clarity that makes the final lines linger. As the song moves towards its close, the interplay between acoustic and electric builds a feeling of closure without ever becoming heavy-handed. It’s a graceful way to end Sunset Funeral. Not aiming for a dramatic finale but leaving you in a soft afterglow.

Across these eleven tracks, Glare show an instinctive grasp of mood and pacing, balancing moments of sheer, blissed-out heaviness with passages of delicate clarity. The album moves like a tide, pulling you in and letting you drift. The band’s command of texture is remarkable. Guitars shift between sandblasting distortion and glassy chime, bass lines carry as much melodic weight as the vocals, and the drums shape the flow without ever crowding it. What’s striking is how cohesive it all feels. Even when Glare shift gears the record holds its emotional centre. It’s a sound steeped in the lineage of shoegaze giants like My Bloody Valentine, Nothing and Whirr, but there’s nothing imitative about it. Glare’s take on the genre is personal and human, rooted in feeling over form. This debut doesn’t read as a band testing the waters. It plays like a confident statement from a group who know exactly what they want to say. Sunset Funeral is heavy gaze at its most affecting.

Sunset Funeral is out now via Sunday Drive Records and Deathwish on various vinyl variants. Make sure to follow the band on the Glare Bandcamp page.

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