Stella Dawes - Contrasts Review

Published by Al Young | Filed under Music

I hate how the more prevalent local scenes develop. You have one band which does something semi-original, and then you get the emulating hoards who will follow objectivelessly: they just want the benefit of the peer validation of being part of this sprawling ‘community’ of the bands of said scene. Innovation dies off and you get a group bouncing ideas only off of one another. External influence becomes a taboo: and ‘us and them’ attitude is bred.

This is why I love the idea of Stella Dawes. It takes strength of character in a group of individuals to go off from our fair city’s current largest scene of the pseudo-indie/pseudo-pop ‘creatives’ following in the footsteps laid out by the likes of Editors and do something so distant from this prevailing mood. Thick distortion, chugging riffs and harmonics which should sound awful find their homes here in contrast to the almost expected treble-loaded tremolo that has become the order of the day: it’s for this reason that it is fitting that ‘Contrasts’ is the album title. I must say, before the true meat of the review is started, that the packaging of the album was top-notch and probably would have put me in a mood good enough to enjoy any music, but in the interests of journalistic professional conduct, I put it to one side and didn’t listen to the album for a couple of hours: just long enough for me to get over the excitement which, essentially, four pieces of cardboard had brought into my day.

Mouth starts the album with fifty-six seconds of noise: a simple but effective introduction of the mood of the music to come. Happy Ever Afternoon rises from the ashes of this noise introduction with an almost unrelenting ferocity: the immediacy of pageninetynine is meshed with the sheer brutality of Orchid to produce a post-apocalyptic soundscape. Even in its quiet parts, this song is incapable of subtlety: its production is raw, with vocal falterings left in and feedback adding to, rather than detracting from, the overall texture of the track. The refrain of ‘more beautiful for tomorrow’ is guttural and strained in its execution and it adds true character to the song: this isn’t art, it’s a true emotional outpouring. The lyrics in other places border upon the divinely socially conscious: ‘We polish shit but, like it or not, nobody here is perfection, but we’re coming close’ is a blatant nod towards the misled interpretation that perfection is achievable, if at all desirable.

With Dichotomy, I was expecting a simple half-half quiet-loud dynamic, but it would appear that I project song titles onto the content of songs a little too much. The song gradually builds up for a minute, and then ascends into chaos with sonic bombasticity of the most endearing kind, and unparalleled by all that I can think of with the possible exception of Russian Circles. Distorted vocals are experimented with here to great effect: it’s not about the words, per se, but more about the position and role of vocals in the song. This distorted sequence serves to fill the void left by the descent of the guitars into a relative quietness and cleanliness. Shifting dynamics and textures are used on Dichotomy to produce a very unique and identifiable sound.

Investment Intercourse: A Deposit is the most conventional track so far on the album, showing nods towards the likes of Norma Jean through its initial minimalist instrumentation and then full-band blowout. Cowboys Become Folk Heroes would be enamoured by the vocals on display here: screams fluctuating in and out of the ’screaming’ band of singing and into the standard bounds of conventional ’singing’: this just adds to the sincerity of the music. Nothing is forced: nothing has been completely and utterly bastardised in ProTools. This is honest music. Everything Happens to Eeyore starts off with a calm, almost freeform jazz aesthetic (reminiscent of a couple of tracks from I Would Set Myself on Fire for You’s Believes in Patterns), but soon reaches the climax of churning guitars with the almost overbearing cataclysmic drumming drilling the pictures of their artistic vision into your head.

Gut is another exercise in instrumental experimentation from Stella Dawes: the guitar tone is similar to that of an ’80s Metro struggling to turn over. This gradually fades out and becomes the noise of a solitary detuned guitar. It’s yet another wonderful foray into the realms of noise as an art form. Investment Intercourse: A Return follows on from the drum outro of Gut but soon finds its own place with the introduction of an infectious lead part over it, with bass joining in later. This is a change from the generally ‘hardcore’ music pursued thus far, and shows a leaning towards the realms of post-rock. It’s a nice break in the middle of the album to cool down a little: angry, angry music is prone to make one angry.

Track eight is Sleep is for the Week, a progressive post-rockesque romp starting with a simple plucked 2-note guitar line leading into a more complex multifaceted full-band performance. It climaxes in a manner which could well be considered both ‘epic’ and ‘brutal’, both in the ironic and non-ironic senses. Fifteen Hour Drive takes a different tack to everything on the album prior to this point: clean guitars leading into a crescendo of distortion and strained vocals. It’s almost like a laid-back Explosions in the Sky song.

When the Tiger Lost His Voice sees a plodding heaviness which somehow manages not to be dull through the latent yet apparent emotion of the vocals. Their mystical chainsaw tone is present here, replete with a background chanting which is reminiscent of Lion of the North. The Unspeakable is a straight-up hardcore song, with chants, octave chords and sequences which shouldn’t be bearable, but are through some divine musical magic. The cries of ‘Is love enough?’ can do nothing but endear the band to the listener: this is once again social commentary of the highest order.

The album ends on a raw, unprocessed high with Decay: it’s a completely unmastered track with a small spoken section at the beginning which explores their recording and musical technique quite nicely.

Overall, this album is superb: it’s intellectual hardcore. It’s brutal, yet subtle; artistic, yet emotional. It is the embodiment of the DIY ethic through its production method: all of the mastering was done internally. Buy it. Listen to it. See them live. You’ll love it.

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