Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Glasser‘s “Apply” 12-inch. Download two of the songs (and an exclusive YACHT remix), buy the record and read Schnipper’s thoughts on it after the jump.

You know, the dentist is the doctor I see the most regularly yet my teeth are the part of my body that are always healthiest. Seems like a paradox I deserve—paying a bunch of money for some positive reassurance. I need to cut back from twice a year. I got x-rays last time and it cost $250. Everything was perfect.

But really, I’m not worried about my teeth. I’m kind of worried about my brain. Or at least I was until a week and a half ago. Right now my brain is awesome. But before that I don’t things were so good. To be totally honest, they never really were killer. I was a weird little kid. I remember being in a psychiatrist’s office in second or third grade taking some kind of smart vs weird test. I was clearly a total weirdo, but the idea that I was weird enough that I needed to get officially tested for it was a bummer. I hated going to the psychiatrist because all the other people in the waiting room seemed way more aggressive and scary. My mom would usually wait while I was seeing the doctor, but the day of the test she told me she was going to run some errands while I was in there. I was totally nervous about being in the doctor’s office with all the crazy people without my mom but I didn’t want to look like a pussy so I didn’t say anything. Halfway through the test I pretty much just lost my shit and started crying because I was in a room being tested for crazy and the only people there were the weird doctor and then actual crazy people down the hall. What the fuck did I do to get there? Not cool. My mom needed to come back as soon as possible. The doctor was like “Are you crying?” and I remember instead of admitting or denying I just skimmed the point, told him to not worry about it and keep going. He listened to me and we never talked about it again.

I didn’t see another psychiatrist for awhile, until I had surgery. When you are 13 and you are in the hospital, they make you seen a counselor, which you can then extend into regular sessions or not. I found it helpful and continued seeing her after I was back home. I remember once lying down on her couch and being like “Holy crap I am lying down on the couch of my psychiatrist.” Things got better and I remember one day spending most of the house talking to her about email when email was pretty new and I stopped going after that.

I saw another therapist in college, partly because it they charged on a sliding scale. I was very lost and it was like having a coach. Or like a non-judging, helpful close friend who isn’t really interested in talking about him or herself. That’s also weird, though, because it’s a relationship like any other, so it’s difficult to be comfortable and so forward with someone you don’t know. This therapist ended up telling me about his problems with body image. He was nice. I think I gave him a hug when I graduated. I once saw him on the street and I was like, “Hey!” and he very imperceptibly said hello. I appreciate that because you aren’t supposed to discuss any of that shit in public at all. A year after I graduated I was thinking about the dude and I felt very grateful so I wrote him an email to say thanks but it bounced.

That was pretty much the end of it until a couple of weeks ago when my brain tanked. I’ve felt like that before in touches, but this was particularly gnarly. It seems a little self-important, woe-is-me to discuss such recent history, so I won’t, but I mention this because I got called out for the half-assed shit I wrote last week. I left out a lot of background information (that, admittedly, I am still leaving out) in favor of simply celebrating the fact that I did not go to Disneyworld. In an open letter to me on her blog, Michaella Solar-March said: “In this week’s Slept On you didn’t seem like yourself. Not that we’ve ever actually met, I’m hardly the best judge. But you seemed less, I don’t know. What? Less cheery. Less inspired.” This was pretty intense to read because, well, some girl in the other hemisphere who I have never met was calling me on some bullshit that she was right about. This post also rightfully bummed out my family, but they didn’t know the relevant details, that my celebration of staying in New York and not going to Orlando was one huge symbolic, cinematic relief unrelated to them. I just felt less weighted. I was sad to not see them. So I apologize, Mom and Dad. It was just that the long weekend tethered to home but with an open promise was really important. I just needed some time. As I have said before, I take things pretty hard and I need to erode that tendency. Everything is always a trigger. Long story short, I don’t want to feel like that again and, as best as I can, I am going to try not to. What I have ignored in my triggering is that if everything can be a nudge into the harsh, maybe some things can be the opposite. Every day walking to lunch I pass a dog salon, watch the dogs get haircuts. I got a good deal on a blue oxford shirt I needed. I have a blender to make smoothies. My sister is so happy. My cousin is having a baby. I work hard and am proud of that. There is so much sweet shit. Woe is me? Oh dude get over it. Since I rebirthed myself out of a caul of death-ridden gunk, my vision has realigned and spring has born inside my body. Or maybe I’m just on the peppy upswing of some horrific manic cycle, but I’ll take what I can get. Here’s what’s the bees knees this past week:

Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man and On Beauty
My roommate Andrew and I had a discussion about age and achievement. “I’m not a genius,” he said, talking about his upcoming birthday and his lack of success at creating something as grandiose as Facebook. He seemed concerned. This was funny because he’s a total champion to me. He has a good job, a sweet girlfriend and once modeled for Italian Vogue. I told him I thought that in order to churn out a ginormous and ridiculous project you need to have some kind of bellowing hubris and he doesn’t have that. He’s a calm, intuitive, conscientious, nice person. But you never see yourself, or your successes as others do. Towards the end of The Autograph Man, the main character Alex-Li Tandem is confronted with other people’s truths about him, which are that it seems like, despite his father’s death and a general confused aloofness about social interaction, they all like him and think he a good guy. On a car ride after Alex has returned from the US, his friend Joseph, who Alex thinks has been gruff with him, expresses his awe with how Alex exists. “You’re determined to shape what to me is fundamentally without any shape—and the joke is, you don’t even realize it. You always go on about despair, but you don’t even know what color it is.” As he is speaking, Alex “slapped the dashboard in protest, amazed, as most people would be, by another man’s laudatory description of the accident we call our lives.” I’d finished the book earlier in the day, before I had beers with Andrew, and this is what I thought of. It was a beautiful moment—ruined in the book by Joseph’s unexpected and unnecessary admission of a 15 year unrequited crush on Alex—someone pausing to see that the gross mess of their daily crap was actually quite laudatory, honorable and sweet. Too bad the rest of the book sucked. It took me six months to finish and I had to force down the last 50 pages. Two summers ago I read Smith’s third and most recent novel, On Beauty, and it was perfect. I believe it is so good because the entire book’s unique duty is to gleam its sunshine on the lives of its characters, a complicated but loving illumination. I’ve had On Beauty beside my bed for months, keep meaning to reread it, pick it up and read a few pages, never stick. I wonder if I will now. Its promise doesn’t lay in the surprise but in its simple method. That’s what it’s like to not own Facebook at 27, a relief. Who cares, you’re doing fine.

The Larry King Article in This Month’s GQ
Andrew’s girlfriend Rachel came in from the Netherlands for a wedding and stayed at our apartment for a week. During that time, I read this article about Larry King in the new GQ. Did you know that he is kind of a complete lunatic? I imagine that Chris Heath, who wrote the story, must have done his first interview and realized that he would be able to coast just fine on this one. Apparently there had been a rumor that Larry King farts a lot and has a fan in his studio to clear the air. Heath waffles on asking King about this unfortunateness before finally broaching it. King says, “I have no idea what you are talking about. … It’s nothing I do more than any ordinary person would do. And when I do do it, it always feel good. It never feels bad. But I don’t do it a lot, and I don’t have a fan. And maybe once in my life have I done it on-air—I have no memory of doing it on-air.” Heath then writes, “Following this discussion, King amiably digresses about how, though most days he gets a five-minute sneezing fit, he has never sneezed on-air. And how much it annoys him that characters in the movies and onstage never seem to go to the bathroom. And about the time he moderated an event with Norman Scwarzkopf where a six-year-old asked, ‘General, when you’re fighting a war, how do you go to the bathroom?’ ‘As to flatulence, [King] says, ‘I have no idea where that came from.’” After I finished reading this article, I tried to explain it to Andrew and Rachel. I vaguely recounted a tale where King borrows money from someone and they go to jail and it has something to do with Richard Nixon and I know that halfway through this story I do not remember any of the details correctly but they look at me interested, like they care and I deeply appreciated that extension of trust. Later, Larry King is on The Daily Show (both the article and appearance are promoting his new memoir) and this anecdote is explained. They enjoy it and we talk about how he looks like a lizard.

Deborah Breevoort and Chuck Cooper Got Married
I always read the Weddings section of the NY Times. This is not something I am especially proud of. But I like to see who the people are and what their jobs are, if they had a peculiar interfaith minister, or if they got married in Orlando when they live in New York. I wonder about what Murray Hill bars the finance people met at, how many people actually met on JDate and are pretending they met at synagogue. Though the Times does their due diligence to diversify the section, it’s usually rich people in their twenties. So it’s nice when it is a gay couple, an older couple both on their first marriage, a widow or widower remarrying, or people who just seem not WASPy. It’s occasionally difficult to discern how interesting these people actually are, as the announcements are brief. But occasionally they have a video. Deborah Breevoort and Chuck Cooper have a video. Breevoort is a playwright and Cooper is an actor. They met when he auditioned for a play she wrote. “We got into a rehearsal hall and I was all business,” Breevoort says, “then I found myself looking at him every spare minute and whenever he’d look in my direction I’d look away. And I thought, Aw man, you’re lost! You’re a goner!” After rehearsals, their first time alone was on the subway, where Cooper says he “regurgitated” his life story to her. He tells this, then mocks vomiting on her lap while they sit on the couch. His hands waterfall from his lips like puke. She laughs. It’s difficult to see in the photo I am holding because of the video bar, but they have their arms linked, cute and content. In Larry King’s article he discusses the fact that he has had many, many wives and says that he thinks he is more normal than people who are married for 50 years. Maybe that’s true. Maybe you shouldn’t be married for 50 years, you should just get married at 50. Look at how they look at each other!

Glasser’s “Apply” 12-inch
I like reading Kathy Grayson’s blog because it’s mostly pictures and it’s about art without being scary. Sometimes it’s also about her boyfriend. I don’t know her or him, but they seem happy. I don’t want to know you, I just want you to keep existing. Last week Glasser played at a benefit for the New Museum. I wanted to go. When I was not feeling so hot I was listening to Glasser over and over. I like my time on the subway to listen to music because that is when I can be around a lot of people but not have to talk to them. It’s a serene way to enter or end your day. Glasser’s song “Apply” stayed on repeat for a few days last week, like Philip Glass with Tori Amos singing. Except that sounds terrible. What do I know? I was sad I had to miss Glasser to go see Grizzly Bear at Town Hall and was happy to see, scrolling down Kathy Grayson’s blog that she went to the event. There is one photo of Glasser, unidentified. She said she had to leave. Turns out she couldn’t stay because she had to drive to Pennsylvania to go to her grandmother’s funeral. She seemed really grateful that her boyfriend went with her. It’s good he did. Sometimes you have to miss Glasser. She’ll be back.

Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest
The day before the Grizzly Bear show my friend Tierney and I got a drink. Before that I went home and had some leftovers and watched a little bit of True Life on MTV. There was a Guatemalan girl who had been adopted into the United States who, at twenty, found out she had a twin sister and she contacted her and was able to go to South America to meet her. They couldn’t even speak to each other without a translator. The sister who had to stay in Guatemala was so angry with their mother that she no longer spoke to her. The American girl coming was a greater rift. I didn’t finish the show because I had to go to the bar so I wouldn’t be late. I had one Belgian beer, then another and then I was accidentally drunk. I knew I needed to eat more food because that beer is heavy and I am not and I walked home and said to myself “Buy cheese because you need to make a sandwich, that is the easiest thing you can make.” And then I really wanted to listen to “Fine For Now” and I took our my iPhone and put on “Fine For Now” from Veckatimest and it started playing something else and I was so confused but I looked again and it was just that I was drunk and clicked the wrong song. By the time I figured this all out I was home and did not buy cheese. I ended up just eating vegetarian deli meat from the package and some peanut butter before going to sleep. I woke up feeling fine the next day. After work, I took a girl to the concert and we walked in to where our seats were. But I thought that wasn’t where our seats were. So I was like, “Hey, let’s walk through that huge crowd gathered in that little space to get to the other side of the theater,” which we did. Our seats were not there. So we had to walk back to where we came from. Someone saw us trying to cut through and said sarcastically, “Good luck! I just tried to do that,” and I was like “Shut up, shut up” because I felt pretty stupid. But the concert was really beautiful.