Don Glori // The Eisenberg Review Interview
Melbourne-born, London-based multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Gordon Li, aka Don Glori, steps into sharper focus on Paper Can’t Wrap Fire, his third full-length and most compositionally assured work to date. While his previous release, Don’t Forget To Have Fun, played like a sun-drenched sketchbook — all vibrant rhythmic interplay, Brazilian flourishes, and loose-limbed joy — this new record feels more sculpted, more declarative. It’s a truth-seeking suite of songs that stretch across soul, funk, R&B, and jazz without settling into any one lane.
The album’s title nods to an old Chinese proverb, a poetic warning that the truth has a way of burning through the masks we wear. Li leans into that heat, drawing out themes of observation, identity, and clarity in tracks that shimmer with human touch and studio immediacy. Recorded over two summer days in Collingwood with a tight circle of Naarm collaborators, the sessions carry a palpable live-in-the-room warmth. Brazilian textures ripple beneath “Ron Song” and “Power,” while “Song For Ants” and “Precious” spiral outward in expansive jazz movements — melodic and meditative, but never meandering. It’s here, in these longer-form compositions, where Li’s writing and bandleading find their fullest expression, echoing the spirit of the British jazz underground that first caught my ear nearly a decade ago.
We caught up ahead of the album’s release to talk about songwriting as truth-telling, the power of ensemble intuition, and what it means to make music with no mask. Like the record itself, the conversation is open, searching, and full of light.