Echo and KEPW welcome Atara Glazer of Plastic Rhino

Echo: You are listening to KEPW-LP, 97.3 FM, Eugene’s refuge for the weird, wild, and wonderfully unconventional in music. Tonight we’re diving deep into the pulsing electro-metal vortex with Plastic Rhino, a band that’s unafraid to wear its scars and its senses with equal ferocity. Led by Atara—

[00:00:22] Atara Glazer (Plastic Rhino): That’s me.

[00:00:23] Echo: That’s you—whose voice rides the razor’s edge between raw vulnerability and electrifying power, their latest single, Take It All, is a high-voltage declaration of self-possession and defiance, which I, by the way, really enjoyed listening to.

[00:00:37] Atara: Thank you.

[00:00:38] Echo: How do you hold onto your emotional truth when you’re layering such aggressive sounds?

[00:00:42] Atara: We like to have opposite ends of what we’re trying to do. So, topics of love that feel really heavy or terrifying lyrics that over like pop—like opposite ends pretty much of the scale.

[00:00:59] Echo: So Take It All is a bold title. What does it mean to you personally, and what do you want listeners to feel they’re taking when they experience the song?

[00:01:07] Atara: We definitely want, we want our listeners to feel like they’ve just been drained of everything and the song took everything for them. Yeah. That was kind of the idea with the song. Just kind of keep hitting our listeners with everything we possibly can to where at the end of the song you’re just like, ‘Oh my God. Okay. I’m really drained right now.’

[00:01:29] Echo: Yeah. Yeah. ’cause the music is a catalyst. It’s a conduit.

[00:01:33] Atara: Yes, exactly.

[00:01:36] (Take It All sample)

[00:02:48] Echo: So you self-released this single. How has owning your music impacted the way you create and connect with your audience?

[00:02:55] Atara: It’s definitely nice not having to answer to anyone (Oh yeah), to just be able to do what you want to do and be as creative as possible. Obviously you still want to, you know, make it radio-friendly and earworm hooks and, you know, you don’t want to just be out in the void hoping someone understands your music. You want to write music that people will want to listen to.

[00:03:21] So, you know, there is that. You know, when we first started this band, I think we were definitely way out in the universe, just trying everything and honing in on what kind of sound we wanted to create. And it was a mess. Now, 10+ years later of doing this, we finally have figured out how to still do what we want to do, but also make it so that people can relate and want to listen to it. (Mm-hmm.)

[00:03:51] And obviously owning all of our music ourselves helps a lot with not having to answer to anyone bigger, to tell us how to make the music. So that’s definitely been nice.

[00:04:04] Echo: That autonomy is so important to an artist, I feel, because, you know, when you have to change a piece of art that you put out there, you change a piece of your soul, really.

[00:04:14] Atara: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And creating music is like, it’s a part of you and you know, you’re putting it out there and it is a piece of your, like you said, a piece of your soul, pretty much. So it’s just a little scary because you know people can hate it. (Yeah.)

[00:04:36] They can hate it a lot. And then that’s a piece of your soul that people are hating on. Or they can absolutely love it and grab it and ride with it, which has been really great with Take It All and it’s really refreshing to have that.

[00:04:53] Echo: Yeah. There’s a cinematic quality to Plastic Rhino’s sound. What role do storytelling and imagery play when you’re writing a song?

[00:05:02] Atara: Yeah, definitely, that’s what we try to do with our lyrics is create a story that you can follow. I’ve tried in the past writing the most random lyrics ever to describe what I’m singing about. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t and it didn’t. And now nowadays I just find that it’s just better to create that whole story from beginning to end in the song of what you’re trying to express.

[00:05:33] So, definitely for us, it’s important these days. We want the message to come across clear and we want it to sit with you and to, you know, and for you to relate to it and for you to sync to it. Be a part of it.

[00:05:48] Echo: Yeah. And immerse yourself in it. Connect.

[00:05:54] Atara: Absolutely. But we are, we’re both big in movies and we are also huge horror fans. So we lately like try to add a little bit of those elements.

[00:06:05] Echo: Your sound has been compared to In This Moment and Evanescence, artists known for pushing boundaries. How do you approach carving your own identity uniquely within that landscape?

[00:06:17] Atara: Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing about being a female singer in, like, the hard rock metal world is, you all kind of get pigeonholed together and just like, ‘Oh, it’s female vocals over, you know, heavy guitars and big drums.’

[00:06:36] And each individual female-fronted rock and metal band does something very, very, very different. So to me, I would never think we were compared to In This Moment in my head. But that’s really cool that that’s like an outer perspective that someone sees, ’cause I love In This Moment, I just never in a million years would think myself to be like Maria (Brink). So—

[00:07:01] Echo: Isn’t that crazy?

[00:07:03] Atara: Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

[00:07:04] Echo: Yeah. I mean, what a compliment. But I have heard that, so—

[00:07:09] Atara: I love it.

[00:07:10] Echo: How do you balance the theatrical, almost operatic elements of your music with a raw, sometimes chaotic energy of alt-metal?

[00:07:19] Atara: So, that’s funny that you say the, the opera, ’cause I actually was trained as an opera singer in college. And I think a lot of heavy metal singers actually are trained classically as well. I think it actually really helps with the screams and the power because the breathing technique is very similar.

[00:07:46] Echo: You’re breathing from your diaphragm.

[00:07:48] Atara: Yeah. So you always have to have a lot of air support to push out, you know, the crazy Fry Screams and Cookie Monster Screams and such. I love that they have names now. It makes me laugh so hard because we used to just say ‘Scream,’ and now they all like have different names. You’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’

[00:08:09] Echo: I didn’t know that. Cool. What kind of screams are there?

[00:08:11] Atara: Yeah, there’s the Fry Scream. Okay. There’s the Cookie Monster Scream.

[00:08:17] Echo: So Jack Glazer plays multiple roles in your band. How does your creative partnership work when he is wearing the hats of guitarist, bassist and producer?

[00:08:26] Atara: He’s really good at balancing all of those roles really well. We also work with two other producers, so he doesn’t do like all the producing. He, he’s more, he’s like the beginning producer. (Okay.)

[00:08:40] He like gets things started and then we usually go to our other producer, Tom Chandler, and, like, really get the song going and then we’ll go to our other producer, Ron Geffen, and finish the song. And he’s the one that, like, refines everything and smooths everything out.

[00:08:57] Echo: Cool. You have a whole team?

[00:08:59] Atara: We do, yeah. (Yeah.) But, yeah, Jack is a phenomenal guitarist and a phenomenal bass player and it’s really nice having that two in one. And your partner in the band. It is really nice. Like, I wish I was a better drummer ’cause then we would be complete, but I’m not. I’m a terrible drummer.

[00:09:16] Echo: Can you talk about a moment during the making of Take It All where you had to push through to relieve your creative doubt or tension?

[00:09:26] Atara: So Take It All. It’s funny because what I envisioned Take It All to be, when I was just singing it into my phone, was very different than what the song actually became, especially with the dubstep drop at the end. That was all Tom that came up with this brilliant idea.

[00:09:49] He just took it and wrote with it and was like, ‘No, no, we’re going to do this whole thing. We’re going to add this dubstep drop at the end. It’s going to be insane.’ ‘Cause he’s been listening to a lot of EDM.

[00:09:58] That’s what’s so great about collaborating with him, is, you’re just kind of like, ‘Yeah, let’s try it.’ I mean, we’ll try anything. If it sucks, we’ll take it out. If it works, we’ll leave it in. And it worked, so we left it in and now everyone loves it and it’s like, it’s great.

[00:10:14] Echo: One of those happy accidents. (Yeah, exactly.) Mm-hmm. Just worked and Halestorm, I mean, you sound like Halestorm too, a little.

[00:10:23] Atara: Yeah, that, so that one is, that one to me in my head is like one that I always strive to. I love Lzzy so much and I would love to sound like her. I think she’s absolutely phenomenal and does it way, way better than I do.

[00:10:37] But that’s like what I want to be, I want to be Lzzy Hale (Yeah. Don’t we?), and Chris Cornell, and I want to be like a combination of the two. A little bit of Chester (Bennington) in there too.

[00:10:49] Echo: Hey, girlfriend, you’ve got the voice.

[00:10:52] Atara: Thank you.

[00:10:52] Echo: Yeah. I mean, dark pop and electro rock, they often explore themes of darkness and light. So how do you personally reconcile those polarities in your music and in your life?

[00:11:04] Atara: So yes, with, with all the darkness, you know, I mean, you try to, like, give a glimmer of hope at the end, right? So our first single that came out this year, I Rise, was more of, like, a positive outlook, you know: ‘Even when you bury me like a zombie, I’ll rise.’ Like a female power song. (Mm-hmm.)

[00:11:30] But Take It All? Take It All, I don’t know if the light won at the end of that one.

(Take It All)

[00:12:05] Echo:   That was Plastic Rhino and the song, Take It All. It’s a lot to take all in, but it’s a beautiful song. Hope you enjoy.

Image courtesy Plastic Rhino via Instagram. Listen to Underground Echo Wednesdays at 6 p.m. on KEPW 97.3 FM.