For a few years I had a subscription to MOJO Magazine. I really miss it. I used to love and trust it for their new music reviews — it’s how I found out about Devendra Banhart, The White Stripes, The Shins and Kelley Stoltz.
OMG Kelley Stoltz. Back then, I was really broke. The MOJO subscription was a gift. I was also in rural Eastern Ontario, so there was no means of access to his albums. But, after reading MOJO‘s take on his first self-released album Antique Glow, I just had to hear what they were talking about. So, I did a bad thing. I went to Limewire — an early peer-to-peer download service — and grabbed a few tracks: Underwater’s Where The Action Is, Jewel Of The Evening and Mean Marianne made all my mix CDs for ages. I liked them so much I even wrote to Stoltz and told him I wished I could be in a band with him.
I did the next best thing and started my own. Well, I started trying to write and record my own music. He was the inspiration, and remains a massive foundational influence, as well as ongoing one. His records are still not terribly common or easy to find, so I was positively giddy to come across a copy of his “major-label debut” at a garage sale recently. I snagged 2003’s Below The Branches on Sub Pop for $10. I have popped songs from this onto playlists for years, but never properly sat down with the album before. Holy smokes, is it ever good. All his albums are, at least the ones I have — this one, Ah! (Etc) from 2020, Que Aura from 2017 and 2019’s My Regime.
Sometimes you hear a song that sends you. You know what I mean? It grabs you and all other sounds disappear. It connects with you and finds that sweet, sweeping place in your sternum. For me, it’s usually the vocal phrasing and a particular musical refrain — not quite a riff, but a repeated pattern. When I put Below The Branches on my turntable, I knew most of the songs but was slammed by Words, which is track four. It contains the album’s title. Holy gawd on Earth, this song just wrapped itself around my heart. In this case, the musical refrain is an eight-note piano lick. A sweet, rise/fall thing on an upright piano with an honest room mic on it. It’s exactly the kind of sound I love — not overdone, processed and glossy but rather real and evocative of the possible space in which it was captured. Music made by a music lover. You can just tell.
Then his voice comes in and suddenly you’re in that Steve Miller, warm skin, sunshiny Wild Mountain Honey place. That’s where it sent me. I got up and played it again. And then again. This is the sort of thing which happens to me when I find a song like this, but deliciously rarely. It happened with Call Out by Jim Bryson, Will You Return/When You Come Down by Flaming LIps, and Thoughts Of You by Dennis Wilson. Probably others, but I can’t think of them right now. Oh — Chills by Acetone and Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars. So that gives you an idea, maybe. If not, perhaps the bubble machine will:
Anyway, all this to say that Words is an all-timer for me. I’ve read some negative reviews of this record from prominent sources. None of them mentioned Words. To my mind that’s like reviewing Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie and not mentioning Passenger Seat. But that’s subjectivity for you. To me, Stoltz is brilliant. He’s kind of my Dylan, except even more influential because we’re closer in age, he plays all his own instruments and writes songs I could almost imagine myself doing.
Let’s go through this beauty. It opens with, ironically, Wave Goodbye. A pound-the-piano-together-with-the-floor-tom song. The kind of tune which becomes a favourite of young bands because it has a different dynamic. Stoltz’s music is rarely in any danger of sounding like the same arrangement every time. Blessed are the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriters who try to write songs using a different instrument from time to time: “I started this one on the piano!” or “this was written on a guitar with a broken string, open tuned to G” or “I actually wrote this around a drum track.”
Speaking for myself, I write songs the way I would build a rock garden. No plans, just start with what you got and what you can do without help. You can ask for that later. Stoltz does that on this album. Unlike Antique Glow, he gets a few other musicians involved for overdubs.
Wave Goodbye is a cheery song about packing up your troubles. There’s guitar played by himself, but overdubbed stuff from others — including one bit which sounds an awful lot like the chord organ pictured stacked on a piano on the cover. Great opener, no bridge, just meat and potatoes. Or grape slush and a cigarette.
Next up is Little Lords, a more atmospheric, more acoustic song. More complex, as well. Apart from its production, it wouldn’t seem terribly out of place on the Beck-produced Thurston Moore album, 2010’s Demolished Thoughts. If you don’t have that: Seek. This one’s also pianoful and a wee bit psychedelic. Like the aforementioned Words, it also has a refrain bit, this one on guitar rather than piano.
Then we have Track 3: Ever Thought Of Coming Back. Secular songs with “Jesus Christ” as the first lyric would be a tough category on Jeopardy! This one deals with similar themes to My Back Pages, in that Stoltz is better-prepared to deal with bad advice and Jesus now than he was before. The song just picks up more and more, and really, he could have added a solo at the end and come back for a pair of additional choruses. I haven’t seen him live. Perhaps he does.
Words is the song after that. Oh, and it’s got double-tracked vocals which I love and everyone tells me to stop doing. Come here, Kelley. I wants to hug ya.
Mystery follows, which begins in haunted-psychedelic fashion, giving way to another tender ballad as the vocal starts. There is top-notch craftsmanship here, the way the vocal melody circles and then pairs the musical progression. It’s like that scene in Cinderella when the birds are helping make the dress. Flying the ribbons up and around. This one is very chill. Headphones on the train.
The last song on the side is Summer’s Easy Feeling, which has always sounded familiar to me. You could have made a big hit out of this as an ’80s pop band. But in this form, it is a barely-more-than-two-minute atmospheric, simple beauty. Again with the bum-bum-bap bum-bum-bap floor tom beat but with rain barrels of echo, at least for a little while. No bridge, he just wants to get the point (or song) across. His mac and cheese doesn’t need cayenne to taste authentic because he uses good cheese. And butter. A fuck-ton of butter.
Flip this thing over and you get a side-opener every bit as catchy as Wave Goodbye. Perhaps even moreso. Memory Collector was even used in an ad, I think. You can see why he gets compared to Ray Davies all the time. Truth is, Davies was never this consistent.
Birdies Singing comes after, perhaps written on an open-tuned acoustic played with a slide. I have to wonder what he used for a slide — an actual slide? Maybe, maybe not. The solo-y, lick-y slide stuff certainly sounds like it was. Anyway, this one picks up and is quite fun, but it may be a case of the arrangement being better than the song. Try to do this one too simply, or in another style and I don’t think it comes off. Took me awhile to figure out what it reminds me of, and I finally got it: I Will Follow Him by Peggy March.
The Rabbit Hugged The Hound is very ’60s poppy. I love the audible pick scratches. Very Syd Barrettesque for me. I guess this is the album’s deep cut. This is the “George song” of the album. Both one you sometimes forget and one which is sometimes your favourite.
Next is The Sun Comes Through, the album’s epic (4:36!). It is actually, seemingly a little anthemic. The verses have got a Billy Joelish midtempo, late-’70s pace to them, but with an underlying thick, wet, low synth drone throughout. It smiles that smile that only comes from either too much weed or too much time alone with the Space Echo. That underlying drone keeps you company through the quiet gap sections where it gets pretty trippy. Well, as trippy as one gets with a bunch of acoustic instruments.
Winter Girl is next. I suspect this one was written as it sounds — piano and vocal. An even deeper cut than The Rabbit Hugged The Hound. If this is the album’s most forgettable track — and it is — that’s really saying something. It’s a lovely little pop song.
Prank Calls comes after that. This is the first song from this album I ever heard. Holy damn it’s great. Catchy, genuinely catchy and secretly clever. Likeable — even with the Muppet tap dancing bit after the first chorus. This is an all-timer for me.
“In our walls, prank calls
You know who that’s coming from
Some old lover who ain’t getting none.”
The album closer is No World Like The World, which is almost Disneyesque in that it makes me feel like a child. Oh, I think I finally hear that chord organ in there. The album’s shortest track doesn’t mess around. It has a pretty, earworm refrain, which it does only long enough to stay with you as you transition back to your real life.
Nice work, Mr. Stoltz. Oh, and the album was the first ever to be certified as carbon-neutral. 4/5
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
