(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

One of the boldest experiments in 1980s Texas rock was that of Glass Eye, an Austin-based band that debuted in 1985 with the self-produced EP Marlo, a collection of challenging electro-jazz ballads featuring Brian Beattie’s prominent bass, Scott Marcus’s jagged rhythms imposing impossible time signatures, and the “acid” keyboard textures of Stella Weir distorting the little sung melody contributed by Kathy McCarty. Beattie is responsible for the “fusion” harmonies and angular rhythms that graft jazz and avant-garde onto vintage pop.

Their first album, Huge (Wrestler, 1986), largely kept these promises, while the follow-up Bent By Nature (Bar/None, 1988), with Dave Cameron on drums and Sheri Lane on keyboards, attempted a less extreme synthesis. The idea remains to make rock slightly off-kilter, with hiccupping instrumental parts, irregular time signatures, vocals leaning more jazz than folk, and a composure worthy of a chamber quartet (though Kicking The Dog stomps funky). Beattie raves with a saloon-style flair on Comeback, inserting raw Southern-school guitar into “open” harmonic schemes akin to free improvisation, even brushing against early Soft Machine on Living With Reptiles. Meanwhile, McCarty’s ballads (like Whiskey and Oblivion) evoke a middle-aged Joni Mitchell or Grace Slick of Jefferson Starship (Christine). It is a sound perhaps too cerebral, more new wave than college-pop.

The experimental quality of their sound is blended in a more imaginative and less conceptual way on Hello Young Lovers (1989), which, with the original lineup reunited, showcases their best-constructed, catchiest, and most compelling songs. Without sacrificing their harmonic acrobatics and an ever-present swing foundation, Glass Eye manage to craft engaging tracks in which blues, country, jazz, and funk rhythmic lines coexist, alternate, and integrate, continuously shuffled and fragmented.
Their variations on bluegrass (Hoedown), honky-tonk (Land Of People), funk fanfare (Nothing Please), Southern boogie (Charhead), blues-rock (White Walls), and jazz-rock (Penguin) thus become refined post-modernist arrangement masterpieces: they dilute the codes of these genres into a tangle of misleading signals. McCarty, for her part, surpasses Joni Mitchell, presenting herself in a warmer, more earthy guise, trading vocal sophistication for more immediate communicativity while retaining heavily jazzed phrasing (God Take All, Get Lost); her noble contralto gains masculine vigor on Break The Black Line and Endless Day, reaching the peak of vocal poise and accompaniment finesse on The Crooked Place—arguably the album’s high point.

Kathy McCarty's Dead Dog's Eyeball (Bar None, 1994) is a collection of Daniel Johnston's songs, embellished with eccentric arrangements and creative vocals.

Glass Eye's Every Woman's Fantasy (2006) was mostly recorded in 1992-1993.