Glass Eye - Whiskey (Bent by Nature,1988)

One of the most audacious experiments of the Texan rock of years '80 was that one of the Glass Eye, group of Austin begun in 1985 with the autoproduced EP Marlo, a collection of arduous elettro-jazz songs with the bottom of Brian Beattie in beautiful sight, the crooked rhythms of Scott Marcus to impose impossible times, and the timbriche "acids" of the keyboardist Stella Weir to disfigure those little of melodies sung by Kathy McCarty. Beattie is responsible for the harmonies "fusion" and the difficult rhythms that graft jazz and avant-guard onto the ancient POP.
The first album, Huge (Wrestler), of 1986 widely maintained to those promises, while the successive Bent By Nature (Bar/None) of 1988, with Dave Cameron on drums and Sheri Wools to the keyboards, try one less extreme synthesis. The idea is however always that of one to make some rock a little bit askew, with the instrumental parts hiccupping, the irregular times, the song more jazz than folk, and a worthy composure of a chamber quartet (but Kicking The Dog stamps funky). Beattie raves with I take from saloon in Comeback, inserting the royal guitar of the southern school in more "open" harmonic outlines, from free improvisation, until to lick the first Soft Machine in Living With Reptiles. Of other songs the ballads of McCarty (like Whiskey and Oblivion) make one think of Joni Mitchell of average age or of Grace Slick of the Jefferson Starship (Christine). It is a sound perhaps too much cerebral, more from new wave than from college-POP.