{"id":8108,"date":"2015-06-19T05:30:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T09:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=8108"},"modified":"2026-08-15T11:54:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T15:54:27","slug":"album-review-stephaniesid-excavator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/19\/album-review-stephaniesid-excavator\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: stephanies\u012dd – Excavator"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It’s rare that I review the music of artists based in my adopted hometown of Asheville NC. My reason is simple: I gotta live<\/em> in this town. I feel it my duty to pull no punches when reviewing music, so if I perceive flaws or shortcoming in someone’s music, I’ll say so in my review. But when those people are my neighbors, my general approach is to take a pass, or (as I do quite often) write a feature\/interview that explores the artist’s creative process and such, and leave the reviewing to others in other venues.<\/p>\n

stephanies\u012dd<\/strong> <\/strong>are the exception to that unofficial policy of mine. Both onstage and on disc, their music is distinctive, arresting, and compelling. I enthusiastically reviewed Starfruit<\/em><\/a> in late 2011, and that album has worn well these ensuing three and a half years.<\/p>\n

Excavator<\/em> is the group’s latest, and it represents a darker, more contemplative and melancholy ambience than its predecessor. Ten of the eleven tracks on Excavator<\/em> are written or co-written by Stephanie Morgan<\/strong>, an intriguing vocalist of uncanny expressiveness and range. On this record, there’s a kittenish, just-awoken quality to Morgan’s voice, and the arrangements \u2013 led primarily by Chuck Lichtenberger<\/strong> \u2013 are often spare, often using silence \u2013 the spaces between the notes, as they say \u2013 as the backing for Morgan’s vocalizing.<\/p>\n

A sense of melodrama pervades the songs on Excavator<\/em>. There’s a feel of regret and resignation that hangs upon the tunes. Yet despite the often minimalistic approach to the music, at times Excavator<\/em> sounds like the exact opposite: the wide-screen arrangements of Polyphonic Spree<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the band moves away from the heartbreak and melancholy \u2013 as they do on the uptempo \u201cBattery Room\u201d \u2013 they end up sounding like a postmodern rethink of Astrud and Joao Gilberto<\/strong>-styled Brazilian jazz, crossed with The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner<\/em>-era Ben Folds Five<\/strong>. On \u201cBaseball Player,\u201d they sound a good bit like 2015 America’s answer to Radiohead<\/strong> (Morgan is on record as a big fan of Thom Yorke<\/strong>‘s group) circa Kid A<\/em>. Halfway through Excavator<\/em>, \u201cBaseball Player\u201d is the first instance of electric guitar taking a prominent \u2013 albeit exceedingly textural \u2013 role in the music. The album’s instrumental lineup (beyond Morgan and Lichtenberger) features upright bass, trombone, saxophone, bass clarinet, violin and cello.<\/p>\n

As such, it’s difficult (not to mention pointless) to classify Excavator<\/em> as a rock album. It’s certainly not jazz, though the group’s inventive reading of \u201cMy Funny Valentine\u201d has elements of jazz, especially in Lichtenberger’s nimble piano work. It’s also not at all what one could call an immediate record; one has to immerse oneself in the music, or more accurately, allow the music to envelop the listener. That’s a tall order for a musical act to place upon a potential listener, but with Excavator<\/em>, stephanies\u012dd provide a handsome reward for the investment. Simply put, Excavator<\/em> is worth the effort required to get into the current musical world of stephanies\u012dd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s rare that I review the music of artists based in my adopted hometown of Asheville NC. My reason is simple: I gotta live in this town. I feel it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,65],"tags":[2035],"class_list":["post-8108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-stephaniesid","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32220,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8108\/revisions\/32220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}