Review Summary: Tidal waves.
It is always interesting to listen to an album representing a fledgling genre. Emo was only emerging in the mid-nineties with a slew of bands releasing their seminal records around that time, so the genre was free from all the stereotypes and expectations that were attached to it later. I doubt that Christie Front Drive intended to help establish a new genre when they were recording these songs. Most likely, the guys just played rock the way they understood it, and it shows.
Like, you know how emo is supposed to be sad? Tortured, even. Well, not quite the case here. While the lyrics have a moody undertone to them, the music is not like that at all. Even though the album starts slowly and pensively with the opening “Saturday” intertwining piano and guitar melodies, it doesn’t really get to the point of brooding.
What we do get instead is a thoroughly guitar-centered album. Which means that neither the vocals nor the lyrics dictate the mood here, only serving as occasional enhancements for the guitar melodies. It is the guitar that rules here, as it ebbs and flows from gentler passages through sweet melodic licks and spry riffs to extensive solo parts. In its quieter moments the album feels
peaceful, like taking a good long smoke while standing on your balcony on a quiet evening. And then, as it picks up the speed and the guitar spreads its wings, the album starts to feel positively
triumphant, like finally being able to take full, deep breaths after going through some illness that obstructed your airways for a long time.
To be honest, the comparison referenced in the summary seems to be the most fitting, even though it’s not the most original one. This album in its entirety conjures an image of a sea with its waves falling on a clean and empty beach. Sometimes it all quiets down to a ripple, and then the wind blows prompting bigger and higher waves to come alive and cascade on the shore, projecting quiet power, but never meaning any harm.
All in all, "Stereo" is quite an enjoyable album for the times when you are in meditative and reflexive mood, ready to be engulfed and mesmerized by perennial waves of music. The main issue for me is that these waves never get big enough to surf them.
