Glaive ‘I Care So Much That I Don’t Care at All’ Review: Uncomfortably Grim

Glaive’s debut studio album, I Care So Much That I Don’t Care at All, is bound to make listeners feel a sense of unpleasant voyeurism, filled as it is with grim musings from the 18-year-old about suicide, fentanyl, and general teenage alienation, all slickly packaged for alternative-pop radio. On “Barbie Doll,” he at least appears aware of this development in his discography, admitting that he fears he’s becoming “a commodity.”

Glaive’s mumble rap-inspired voice is limited in range and quality, but the rough edges help capture his feelings of despondency and angst. On “Titziana,” he bitterly lashes out at an ex who betrayed him: “Fuck all the times you left me out to dry/I never got the chance to ask you why,” while “Are You Bipolar One or Two” describes the anxiety he’s experienced during his rise to fame. Glaive, who recently came out as bisexual, even frankly disses “friends who are so progressive they called me ‘f*ggot’ a year ago” on “As If.”

While I Care So Much That I Don’t Care at All is unabashedly honest, most of its songs sound as if they could have been released in the 2000s. Initially lumped into the hyperpop scene by the likes of Billboard and Vice, Glaive has moved in a more emo direction, but the album struggles to retain the intimacy of his earlier releases as it delivers a more palatable sound.

Glaive’s debut EP, 2020’s Cypress Grove, more successfully blends guitars and synth fuzz. Here, tracks like “The Good the Bad the Olga” and “Pardee Urgent Care” simply offer up generic pop-punk or indie folk, respectively. Throughout, the guitars are chalky and too heavily compressed, and while “The Car” and “The Prom” stand out for their strong hooks and production choices that actually serve Glaive’s songwriting, they’re not enough to salvage the album as a whole.