Unsurprisingly, the best songs are the ones on which lead guitarist Charles Wyrick takes some of the spotlight away from Perkins, like on the tumbling “Word,” which features the album’s only real fist-pumper of a chorus, or the closing ballad “Razor,” which features an elegant, crystalline guitar solo.
Review by Stewart Mason
Nashville’s Stella was a prototypical early emo band mixing post-grunge distortion and heavy riffs (on first listen, the opening “Song in D” doesn’t sound much different from Pearl Jam) with Curt Perkins’ wailing, rending-of-garments vocals. Unfortunately, Perkins’ lyrics are along the lines of that guy in 11th grade honors English who kept picking fights with the teacher over imagined slights to his embryonic genius; song titles like “Blissmark” and “Rites of Day” are early signposts to Perkins’ overwrought persona, complete with keening moans and “lookit me, I’m so sensitive” lyrical conceits. Unsurprisingly, the best songs are the ones on which lead guitarist Charles Wyrick takes some of the spotlight away from Perkins, like on the tumbling “Word,” which features the album’s only real fist-pumper of a chorus, or the closing ballad “Razor,” which features an elegant, crystalline guitar solo.
The playing is uniformly competent, but the songs are only fitfully memorable at best, and finally, the music can’t support the occasionally irritating excesses of the vocalist.
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