Review Summary: enough good tracks makes this a great album, but not outstanding.
I am a bit confused. I’ve listened to every EP this group has put out, and they’ve all been fairly consistent as to what type of music they embodied. This is fairly common, after all, to know what direction a band considers them to be in. Imagine if all bands had no idea, imagine the confusion the music industry would face. This album basically embodies that type of confusion. Ever heard of something called Dissociative Identity Disorder? If you have, you would remember that it is otherwise known as multiple personality disorder, and you may begin to notice that the symptoms are prominent in
Stevedores. In a pleasant surprise, though,
Stevedores is quite something despite its lack of consistency, just don’t expect to realize it until much later.
Stevedores is frustratingly effortless, and not in the sense that the band is so good that everything they touch turns to chocolate. It often sounds like the band will record anything no matter how sloppy or trivial it is; although their spontaneity sometimes pays off, it also fails. That does not mean that the entire album is garbage though, it just results in absentmindedness. Ambient music was always the band’s focus, and it still is, but many experiments took place here. Sometimes it’s simple piano pieces, sometimes it’s messed up loops, sometimes it’s just a keyboardist and drummer playing randomly – there’s even a wannabe horrorcore track somewhere in that mess. It’s all over the place like exploding tomato sauce, and man is it interesting. Now, normally when I complain about an album I fully anticipate it to be missing some key ingredient, but it seems I was wrong this time (someone pinch me). It all works out in the end.
I never thought I would say it, but it seems that ambient music can be catchy too. With vocal loops used extensively in tracks such as ‘In The Great Hall’, ‘Song For Sailboat’, and ‘At Chicken Joe’s Pts. I & II’, there is a familiar feeling in the air. Although starting as purely ambience, subtle beats crawl in as tracks become progressively glitchy, but not rudely so. It is odd to dub this progressive considering that only two of the songs are long at all, but Stringer Barksdale make it happen. The only downside is that the progression is much too subtle, and therefore a track like ‘Jumping Out The Apartment Window Into The Kiddie Pool’, although good, progresses towards monotony instead of interest. Overall, Stringer Barksdale do well when messing around with ambient ideas, but do not fare so well when they jump around with piano pieces. It is a great album, but only when considering certain solid tracks. This group does not need to go back to the drawing board, they just need to remember what the big picture is in the first place.
