Stereoflower
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Stereoflower

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"Visions of Horses"

[Editor's note: this is an advance CD review, as such unless you live in Perth, Western Australia, and are the sort to go out of your way to check out local bands, you won't have heard of this band, or any of their tracks. Our esteemed music correspondent would like you to be ware that they do have facebook page, so you can hunt them down there and listen to a couple of their tracks.]
New bands, and more spefically bands that do nothing but gig locally, are often are a hard proposition to deal with. You have to wade through a mass of faux punk, power pop and college rock. You start to wonder whether these band are doing it as a basis for a career, or just to get in the pants of the hired guns behind the bar. Perhaps I am just cynical from seeing one too many cover versions of Anarchy in the U.K.
Little did I realise that in to my hot little hands would be pressed an advance copy of the debut album by a little Perth act by the name of Stereoflower. After one listen through I knew that perhaps I would have to reassess how I look at those little acts that play for tips at little hole in the wall pubs that are a staple in cities all over the world.
Imagine if Tom Petty (actually, let’s say The Travelling Wilburys but after Roy Orbison had passed on, and would hence be a corpse for the sake of this image) and the members of The Brian Jonestown Massacre had a gangbang. Now, imagine that watching this spectacle is a group of small children in the corner of the room. Some would suggest that such a spectacle did indeed take place because those children obviously grew up and became Stereoflower.
Visions of solitude spent on horseback swirl through the album providing a melancholy atmosphere that is at times overwhelming. Tales of love and loss, madness and caraway seeds, haunt Alex Elbery’s vocals which scream of longing. Providing a counterpoint, as smooth as silk, to his impassioned voice is JuJu (we may never know the members of this band apart from their stage names, so get used to the weirdness… and costumes), who gives the harmonies a wonderfully ethereal quality.
The rest of the five piece: Rufus Marmaduke on guitar, Marko Remarko on bass and Dr. Blythe on drums (some say that she has a PhD in rock); are an incredibly strong outfit who have termendous talent, layering sounds that take the record from simple alt-country fluff to something that has been variously described as outlaw country or goth folk.
For now, let’s just call them prog folk, shall we?
Needless to say, some people will have an issue with various things on the album. Some will say that it is too country (and then will say how they love Johnny Cash…) and some will complain that Dr. Blythe does very little on drums (and those people probably said the same thing about Ringo, so they can shut it). Obviously, this album won’t be for those people, and it certainly isn’t for those who like a lot of ‘woohooing’ in their music.
For the rest of us, though, this album is a brilliant little gem that we should be grateful to listen to. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this is the best album of 2008, and one of the strongest debuts in some time. What’s even more surprising is how mature an act they are for a young band, it is the sort of album that asks questions like “If The Beatles had started with Revolver instead of Please, Please Me, where would they have been come 1969?” While that may seem outlandish, give the album a spin, and try and stop yourself from thinking about what amazing releases this band will give us over the next five years.
- Canadian Press


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

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Bio

Stereoflower are the sounds you’ve always dreamt about, but never thought possible. Through their rock/ folk/country/blues melodies, they subtly (and sometimes not to subtly) question everything in the world (and some things out of it) in their thoroughly deliberate lyrics. Stereoflower started out as a one man folk act, but early 2008 saw Stereoflower front man assemble his collection of misfits and create the band they are now. Always challenging the boundaries of what one band can do, they constantly surprise and impress their crowd. With an their debut album nearly ready to take flight, and the songs piling up in a weather beaten notebook, there is only grand things to expect of Stereoflower.