![]() The question is: Will Neon Trees’ hometown fans embrace songs like “Living in Another World,” off their upcoming album Pop Psychology, knowing that they are about Glenn’s struggles with his sexuality? “I hope they don’t feel like we’re pulling the rug out from under them,” he says. And while the band has no overt religious affiliation, it credits the Church of Latter-day Saints’ strict ordinances against drinking and drugs – which the members have adopted as band rules – with helping its rise. Like Glenn, the other three members of Neon Trees were raised Mormon. (He also doesn’t drive.) He has decorated the walls with eyeballs, skulls and a life-size cutout of a naked Morrissey (with a 45 record covering his arsenal). “Mostly it’s just about Christ and his teachings.” Glenn lives about 15 minutes outside of town in a cookie-cutter three-bedroom rental, where he spends most of his time either cooking or watching TV. “I don’t know what the rumors are, but we’re not taught that ‘homos are going to hell’ on Sunday in church,” he says. But, perched on a black sectional couch in his living room, Glenn says that he still identifies as a Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially calls gay sex a “serious transgression” – the same category in which it puts rape, murder and theft – and spent an estimated $22 million fighting LGBT rights in California in the battle over Proposition 8. In five weeks, Provo – an 88 percent Mormon town, in which rock clubs don’t sell alcohol, only soda – will get the news, along with the rest of the world, that Glenn has been quietly sharing with friends and family for a couple of months: He’s gay, has known he’s gay since he was six years old and has been living a closeted life for decades that choked his spirit and threatened his sanity. “I wonder how he’ll feel in about a month,” Glenn muses when we clear the throng. At one point, a bespectacled young guy presses his face to Glenn’s hands and reverently sighs, “I should be on my knees.” ![]() Neon Trees are the city’s biggest export, a New Wave-pop powerhouse with two double-platinum singles, a Buick commercial and a couple of big Glee covers. All evening, Glenn can’t make it more than 10 paces without someone, usually a giggling, polite, teenage blonde, asking for a photo. ![]() He strides a few doors down to the city’s other club, Muse, to check out a rapper in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get-up called Atheist. Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees gleams like a fluorescent highlighter as he emerges from the city’s largest rock venue, Velour, wearing a long green coat that’s the color and texture of a tennis ball, plus a Freddie Mercury T-shirt and leather pants. Listen to Neon Trees’ “Sleeping With a Friend” Provo, Utah, is home to 112,000 people, 61 Mormon churches, four coffee shops, two music clubs – and, on this crisp Friday evening in February, one bleached-blond pop singer enjoying a rare night on the town.
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