Artemis Thomas-HansardWhile most rockers would be chugging beers backstage or schmoozing with fans over the merch table, Clementine Creevy, the just-turned-17-year-old frontwoman of Cherry Glazerr, is hurriedly typing an assignment to her teacher on her phone. She wishes she had brought her backpack to the show, but didn't think she'd have time to study in between opening for Hunx & His Punx. Hannah Uribe,16, has been busy studying for the SAT in between class and practicing drums. And bassist Sean Redman, 22, is the only one who can legally buy a beer.
Credit: Photo by Rhyan Santos
It all started in 2012 with Creevy sitting in her bedroom, listening to Tobacco and Syd Barrett, and writing songs about her cat and the pizza monster under her bed. “I just wrote about what I wanted to write about,” says Creevy. Back then, she recorded under the name Clembutt, and her demos included unpolished versions of tracks “Teenage Girl,” a tune that subtly captures adolescent angst beneath hazy guitar riffs and jingle bells (and also featured by the internationally recognized Rookie Magazine), and “Grilled Cheese,” the song that caught Redman's attention when the two of them met at a summer workshop at the Musicians Institute of Hollywood.
It was with this meeting that Cherry Glazerr semi-formed. Creevy continued to record her original songs with an amorphous band of musician friends, including Uribe and Redman, and worked with “musical parent” and sound engineer Joel Jerome and Tashaki Miyaki's Paige Stark, whom her mom met at a coffee shop and suggested a jam-session. With the work of what Creevy calls “Team Glazerr,” her songs were transformed from bedroom recordings into Papa Cremp, a demo that Burger Records released on cassette in 2013 after co-founder Sean Bohrman discovered it on Clembutt's Sound Cloud. After taking their name from NPR reporter Chery Glaser, the band officially formed and has been delivering ethereal garage rock ever since.
Cherry Glazerr is not your typical high school band. Sure, you'll still find the three-piece playing the Smell and at house parties, crowded with teenagers that aren't old enough to have drivers licenses. (The parents waiting outside to pick up their kids are fans of the group, too. Especially dads.) But they also bring their spunky dream pop to the festival scenes around the Los Angeles and Orange County areas. The band most recently played the El Rey with punk icons Redd Kross and Mikal Cronin, an experience Redman describes as surreal. “It was like we were realizing our own potential as we were doing it.”
Clementine Creevy; Credit: Timothy Norris
Cherry Glazerr also shared a line-up with Bleached and the Black Lips at Jubilee Festival last summer, and played with the Growlers at the Beach Goth Party held at the Observatory last October. They also played alongside local legends FIDLAR and Tijiuana Panthers at 2013's Burgerama, where they captured the attention of fashion icon Hedi Slimane.
Slimane, creative director for Saint Laurent (formerly Yves Saint Laurent), reached out to Creevy and Uribe to play a fashion show afterparty in Paris while the two were traveling in London, a dream come true to a couple of teenage girls. “Teenage Girl” currently holds a place on the Saint Laurent homepage, and the darkly lulling “Trick or Treat Dancefloor” is featured in the fashion label's most recent ad campaign. The song has also been featured in the second season of the CW network's Arrows, and waspremiered by SPIN Magazine last month.
In the midst of all this, they still have to worry about getting their homework in on time. They still watch what they say in interviews because their parents will probably read them, and venues have tried to pay them in pizza. “It's the hardest I've ever tried,” says Uribe about trying to balance being a kid in school and pursuing music, while still mapping out plans for college.
The group admits they have grown up a lot since the release of Papa Cremp, a compilation Uribe calls “silly and simple, in a complex way.” They promise a more structured, mature sound on their upcoming LP Haxel Princess, released January 14th on Burger Records. Intoxicating oldies “Trick or Treat Dancefloor” and “Teenage Girl” can be found on Haxel Princess, while new tracks like “White's Not My Color This Evening” capture a darker, heavier side of Cherry Glazerr. While it's hard to measure the amount of maturity that actually occurs between 16 and 17, it's clear that these kids are not messing around.
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