Songwriter Michael Caridi regrouped quickly after the breakup of his long-running band Lvl Up, taking up the moniker the Glow for his solo material and finishing a debut album just months after Lvl Up played their last shows. The Glow existed in the same fuzz-heavy organic territory as Caridi's former band, but he approached his first album, 2019's Am I, with more experimental production and instrumentation. As a founding member of New York band Lvl Up, guitarist/singer/songwriter Michael Caridi helped develop the group's signature sound, one marked by layers of distorted lo-fi production applied to achingly melodic indie rock songs. Between 2011 and 2018, the band released multiple albums and established a devoted following around their overblown, often existentially themed songs. The band broke up in 2018 and Caridi began work on the first the Glow album, using songs he wrote for a future Lvl Up album that would never come to be as well as other material the band never got around to working on. With help from Lvl Up drummer Greg Rutkin and several other friends, Caridi recorded the debut the Glow LP, Am I, which was released on his Double Double Whammy label in May 2019. ~ Fred Thomas