Gloin’s New Album Turns Anger Inside Out

Gloin. Photo credit: Cherry-Ann Howe.

REVERIE: Your new album, All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry), has just come out. What drew you to those two emotions for the title?

GLOIN: I’ve been figuring out a lot of [those emotions] in the last year or two, because I have a lot of anger and I realized what it is. It’s normally not anger, it’s other things that I’m just ashamed to feel. But with the rest of the songs, it kind of just made sense because maybe, not necessarily all of the songs are about shame, but it’s just a name that kind of encapsulates the feelings and the moods of the whole record. 

REVERIE: Do you want to tell us something that either angers or embarrasses you? 

GLOIN: There are deeply personal things, but I think one of them is how hard it is actually being in the band and being an artist. How much harder that gets every year, and how that kind of reflects itself on your relationships.

GLOIN: I feel like artists are often trying to prove themselves in a way. You’re not really doing what a lot of people would say, “Oh wow, good for you,” so there’s frustration in that. That’s definitely one of them. What I was referring to, I can’t say what makes me so angry that I’m ashamed of, but it’s almost anything that I feel. Anytime I feel offended, I’m just embarrassed of so many emotions but it just comes out as anger. Almost anytime I feel anything it’s like arghhhhh. I can’t let it out because I can’t be vulnerable. That summarizes it up. 

REVERIE: I think a lot of people can relate to that, when I feel angry there’s an undertone of shame. Like maybe I shouldn’t be feeling this way or maybe I should be more understanding. But there’s also important issues that matter that we should be angry about at the same time. 

REVERIE: Larger picture, what’s the origin story of the band, how did you meet in Toronto? 

GLOIN: John and Simon both played in our respective bands in Toronto. One was called Brenda, and one was called Crazy Bones. And we met through that. Simon joined Brenda to play at one point before Brenda ended. Vic I met through my partner, who just moved to Toronto and wanted to start playing music. Vic’s known [John’s partner] since like grade eight, so when Vic came back to the city, and yeah, John was like, “Oh, do you want to play bass?” Like, it was kind of, like this little side thing. And I was like, “Yeah!” Because I had, like, nothing going on. And then it turned into what it was. Just out of control.

REVERIE: What’s your touring schedule like right now?

GLOIN: We just keep playing shows… and trying to get outside [of Toronto], and there's only so much. It's hard to tour, but [booking the shows] is what makes it hard. If you don't have a booking agent, you're playing these shows you booked at a freaking, I don't know, steak bar, and you're like, “What am I doing here?” We played at a ramen place, too. 

REVERIE: What are some of the worst locations that you've ended up at? 

GLOIN: The ramen place was actually pretty chill, that was in New York. Good ramen, but it was weird. 

REVERIE: Were people eating dinner? 

GLOIN: Yeah. We also played at a cigar bar in El Paso. They did not like us. We were gonna play for three hours, like three sets of 40 minutes each, there's locals there, smoking cigarettes, just watching us. There's like, coin machines behind us. It was a bad vibe. You're like, trust me, you don't want us for three hours. You don't want to hear this. It gets to two hours, 55 minutes, you're gonna want this. That was probably, that was probably the two worst ones, yeah, and it was the last stop on the tour.

REVERIE: Oh, that's a brutal end. 

GLOIN: It was at the furthest point going west in El Paso, Texas, and turning around on the CRV, like “Get me the fuck home.”

REVERIE: Yeah, to cross the country back, too, Jesus. Carrying all that shame.

GLOIN: Yeah, that’s right. 

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.