PREMIERE: Edge Petal Burn – “Glass Cannon”

by Matthew Hamer
(Photo by Gold Wing photography and design by Erin Gwozdz)
Edge Petal Burn’s debut LP Glass Cannon is out today, and we think you ought to give it a listen.  

Edge Petal Burn is an Allston band consisting of vocalist/songwriter Olivia West, guitarists Lea Jaffe and Huxley Rittman, bassist Nicholas Owen, and drummer Jeff Crenshaw. “I guess in a way I have always been writing for Edge Petal Burn. The songs on this album are a collection I’ve written randomly and modified for a band setting,” Olivia says. “I had a bunch of people play on the album who aren’t in the band (shoutout to Harley Cullen, Larz Brogan and all the string players), and I had the project go by a different name for a while. Huxley has been in some incarnation of this band in and out for 3 or 4 years, but the current lineup (minus recent amazing addition: Nick Owen), has been around for about a year.”  

On Glass Cannon, Edge Petal Burn sound polished and tight.  Olivia’s vocals feel as fitting over quiet string arrangements as they do over driving guitar parts.  The band mixes sounds eloquently, but it’s in Edge Petal Burn’s rhythm section where the hardcore influence on the record is more identifiable, especially on songs like “Letters” and “Water.”  The band’s primary influences include Pj Harvey, Wipers, Kate Bush, Cranberries, Mysterious Skin, Rudimentary Peni, and Side-action.  
 
(Photo by Omari spears) 
The lyrical themes on the record are consistent.  Olivia writes heavily about the aftermath of an abusive relationship, among other traumatic experiences.  “I have had a lot of trauma involving a Traumatic Brain Injury, and physical and emotional abuse in the past, which led to a lot of memory loss. I forget most things and have learned to set alarms and post notes everywhere. In the aftermath of this I often felt either lost, confused or just hurt. I would play the piano as a form of coping. I would play really repetitious melodic but dissonant lines to help me meditate and process discomfort. I think these hours of piano meditations combined with 민요(Korean folk songs), and hardcore became this record.”  
 
The lyrics on Fish are inspired by Olivia’s experience being harassed as a freshman at Berklee.  “…Some white guy posted a video of me singing on Instagram to make fun of me.  All the comments were basically “how did she get into our prestigious jazz school,” and “wah she can’t sing.”  It kind of hurt my feelings, but eventually it was just silly how much they cared about putting me down.”  
 
On the closing track, Ziggy, Olivia retells of reclamation of identity: “Ziggy is a time capsule of a particular time of my life. I was in college and feeling really lost. My best friend Roya lived in Seattle and when I’d visit we would sit on their kitchen floor eating black sesame rice cakes, while listening to Ziggy Stardust. It was one of the memories and distinct feelings that got me through the rough times. They are also a multiracial Asian person who I feel seen around. I cherished our time together and looked back on it as thought for safety. It’s often that I find white people will do something racist towards me (confuse me for another asian person, make an asian joke about me, call me a slur, tell me they only like half Japanese girls, harm me etc) then immediately wash themselves clean by invalidating my heritage with other facets of my ancestry. I was sick of people treating me like trash in the name of friendship or love or whatever. 
 
(Photo by Gold Wing Photography)
“Boston is blindingly white, and no matter how radical people pretended to be, I found a lot of racism underneath. No one owed it to me or was guaranteed in my close vicinity to support me in the pain of racism, assault and harassment. I created a space to honor myself in that. That space started as this song, then grew into therapy, and then in trusting my friends enough to exist socially. I used this space to take back my autonomy and honor the body my ancestors worked so hard to preserve. I always knew who I was, but I needed to learn words and even violent actions couldn’t take that away.”  
 
Glass Cannon was engineered by Nate Patsfall (Dent, Prior Panic, Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Mail Thief), and mixed by Nick Hine, recorded mostly at Olivia’s old house (34 Brainerd!) in Allston, either in the basement or her bedroom.  However DIY the recording process, Nate, Nick, and Olivia have proven themselves on the production of this record.  “The hardest thing to record was strings. Since they weren’t amplified you could hear all the players’ chairs squeaking and any footsteps from above. I was conducting and singing quietly along, but even the hand movements are slightly audible. I ended up really liking that aspect in the recording, I feel it helped convey the emotions even better than they would have without.”  
 
Listen to the record in full below:
 
 
 
Catch Edge Petal Burn at their release show tonight, or on tour near you: