Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Album Review: Wheel by Laura Stevenson




I seldom get excited about albums in advance. As much as it pains me to say it, I tend to lag a little behind the times when it comes to new music. This isn't to say that I don't listen to modern music, but I do generally learn about great records after the fact rather than before it.

Now, having said that, I stumbled upon the track above (the third off the album) a while back when catching up on some South by Southwest reviews. From the moment I heard it, I was totally enchanted. After a listen (or dozen) to it and her previous effort, 2011's Sit Resist, she rocketed up my list of anticipated releases. I was very, very enthusiastic about this album. So when it dropped on Spotify, I gave it a listen immediately. Now that I have, I'll share my thoughts.

Where this album is strong, it absolutely shines. Stevenson, above all other things, is an extremely versatile musician capable of spanning several genres and sounds. In songs like Runner, Sink Swim and Elenora, she plays an energetic blend of power-pop and punk. To my thinking, this is her best work on the album. Stevenson has a certain forceful quality in this capacity that is at once relentless and endearing. The power that she injects into these tracks is exhilarating, and lends a gravity to the record's emotional lyrics. Whenever one of these more forceful tracks played, I was struck by the desire I felt to continue the rush.

At the other end of the album's spectrum, Stevenson proved herself more than capable of dialing back the power and noise. In a handful of country and folk inspired tracks, she showcased the softer side of her pallet. The Hole, The Move and the album's opening song, Renee, are all standouts in this vein. There are shades of electric country, bluegrass and coffee shop folk here. Her backup band, the Cans, prove themselves just as capable of these sounds as they do the more rock oriented tracks. But it's Stevenson's voice that really takes center stage here. That's not a bad thing, as her soft voice takes on qualities that bring the words "bubbly" and "ethereal" to mind.

The two sounds stand in stark contrast to one another, and only a few tracks, such as Triangle and Journey to the Center of the Earth seem to bridge the gap. This, in the end, is to Wheel's detriment. Though Stevenson is very capable of filling several roles with her music, her insistence on playing them all on one record leads to disjointed feeling. The louder rock tracks and several of the country inspired ones are noisy, and packed with sound and instrumentation behind Stevenson's vocals. That busy sound is one of the album's strengths, but it also makes songs like Telluride and L-DOPA, which are more or less Stevenson singing over nothing more than an acoustic guitar, seem almost hollow by comparison. Not helping matters is that these weaker tracks are backloaded onto the record, giving it the feel that it's running out of gas as it's going along.

If that sounds like a negative review, I assure that it's not. This is an excellent album from an extremely talented artist. It may be a little jarring at times, but she plays every sound she attempts quite well. Though I feel that its individual parts would have made for better wholes by themselves, Stevenson demonstrates a mastery of both powerful, driving pop rock and subtle, subdued folk and country that many artists of either genre fail to attain. Her lyrical themes of the death and rebirth that comes in the wake of failed romance (Like a Wheel. Get it?) are poignant and well structured.

Her craftsmanship of a full record could use a little work, but Laura Stevenson is definitely an artist I look forward to seeing more of in the future. In four years, she's released three albums and each has demonstrated  a marked improvement over the last. Wheel is no exception. I would not be at all surprised to find Laura Stevenson becoming a veritable queen of the indie music scene over the next five years or so. In spite of its flaws, Wheel is an excellent record from a rising star, and one that I highly recommend.

Track List:
1. Renée
2. Triangle
3. Runner
4. Every Tense
5. Bells & Whistles
6. Sink, Swim
7. The Hole
8. Eleonora
9. The Move
10. Journey to the Center of the Earth
11. Telluride
12. L-DOPA
13. The Wheel