…And then foisted upon the world in disbelief of their lack of fame. Yes, I got the album for free, but I think I attempted due diligence by shoving it into constant rotation in our playlists. Alas, people seem to have a filter for only hearing music they’re already pre-conditioned to, which makes one wonder how they got conditioned to it in the first place. But while I try to sort out that chicken and egg problem, let’s get the album’s flaws out of the way:
There are none.
Sincerely. My single note of feedback would have been to change at least one of the repeated exultations on When Radio Came, just for the sake of some final punctuation to the song’s meaning, but that might just be me wishing I understood what was being sung about, as it lurches from a cute riff on Video Killed the Radio Star to something seemingly more internal. But look – sometimes the lyrics aren’t for us, and as long as the intent is relatable, we can headbang or mope or weep or whatever without knowing exactly what’s what, and the quality of this track certainly meets that qualifier end to end.
You got me in a tizzy, looking for faults in a diamond.
Stereobate’s strength lies in the precision of any given song’s pauses and bursts. A lot of groups do the quiet / loud thing, but I’ve rarely heard one group prove consistently able to switch from hardcore shouts to Mogwai-spaceyness to post-rock thump to pretty instrumentals without it ever feeling like a front or a mess. They amp it up for only the necessary instances to make their mark, equally willing to coast on pleasant instrument interplay, or to rely on the speak-sung vocals and lightly jazzy drumming for stretches of a track. And maybe this is just a short track with some samples; maybe its an epic guitar build-up. I feel like a lot of groups that do this multi-faceted act prove stronger at one or the other, or the underlying structure of the album – here’s our heavy song; here’s our pretty song – is too blatant, but every track on Silent Era is wholly conceived. It shifts through these different styles as needed by the song, and not some external requirement. That the album initially breaks down to every other track being with vocals is misleading; it’s interesting when it goes off this mark in the disc’s latter half, and I think enhances the experience as you listen to it more (and you will!), feeling the flow of the album; the complete lack of deadtime thanks to this organic and yet precise sense of composition.
While I don’t follow Eli Janney’s production work as dedicatedly as I do some others, he really found a great match in Stereobate, the crystal clear and yet very earthy production qualities – nice rounded guitar and bass tones, deep drums – something of a middle ground between the loose, fuzzy funk of New Wet Kojak and the stereo-crowding rock of GVSB. The vocals are often treated on Silent Era, masked behind some distortion or fade, which was a smart decision for finding the right layer for their somewhat atonal pitch. And on headphones, just as the group knows how to seamlessly shift the intensity, Janney plays with the mix – extra effects, left and right pans – only when needed, when it serves to punch up a moment that touch more.
Yes: Slint, Shellac types will find familiar sounds here, but there’s a little something for everyone out of the whole Chicago / NY post-rock scene on Stereobate’s sole album. Maybe people got scared off by the cheap artwork, or that it wasn’t on Touch and Go. Maybe they didn’t walk into my music store when I wad trying to force feed the album to everyone. Whatever the reason: Congratulations. You nearly ruined music by not giving these guys an audience. WE’RE ONLY BARELY SURVIVING, JERKS.
If you’re okay with some yelling and you like any of that post-rock nonsense, you owe it to yourself to give this a listen. It deserves to be a classic.
vaguely-offensive 