{"id":18631,"date":"2020-04-12T05:30:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T09:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=18631"},"modified":"2024-01-09T07:37:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T12:37:47","slug":"album-review-stutter-steps-reeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/12\/album-review-stutter-steps-reeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Stutter Steps &#8212; Reeling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-18632\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/stutter_steps.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/stutter_steps.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/stutter_steps-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/stutter_steps-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Remember college rock of the \u201880s? When hair bands like Bon Jovi were crowding out more interesting music on commercial FM radio, college-based radio stations like WRAS (at my alma mater, Georgia State University) were opening our ears to rock of a more nuanced sort. Sometimes it was country-influenced, like Long Ryders; they managed to say something new musically while paying tribute to earlier country-rock hybrids. And they didn\u2019t without sounding like watered-down country-pop or Eagles (but I repeat myself). Other bands brought forth the jangle with a kind of windswept, Midwestern feel. I\u2019m thinking of bands like Wire Train, BoDeans, Green on Red and the like.<\/p>\n<p>But what does all of this have to do with an album released in 2020? A lot, from my point of view. While Ben Harrison\u2019s Stutter Steps has its own original character, if you grew up loving the kind of thing that Dream Syndicate did, you\u2019ll love <i>Reeling<\/i>. Harrison\u2019s phrasing on \u201cOver It\u201d sounds remarkably like Steve Wynn might have done it. Stutter Steps never sounds as if they\u2019re aping their influences, but it\u2019s not difficult to spot the sources of Harrison\u2019s inspirations. \u201cLeafy Dreams\u201d sounds like early-mid Velvet Underground at their poppiest (which is to say a little but not very much pop). \u201cReeling\u201d conjures thoughts (again) of Dream Syndicate, crossed with R.E.M and maybe a splash of Jesus &amp; Mary Chain.<\/p>\n<p>The dreamy, contemplative \u201cKeepin\u2019 On\u201d has a character that reminds me of Rainy Day\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Keep it With Mine.\u201d And as a whole, <em>Reeling<\/em> is very much in line with the kind of musical mindset that informed the Paisley Underground bands of the \u201880s. With some notable exceptions, those groups \u2013 Rain Parade, the Three O\u2019Clock \u2013 rarely showed up on commercial FM playlists. In a just world, they would have. But at least those of us in the know did get to hear (and in some case, see) them.<\/p>\n<p>The music landscape today is quite different from the 1980s scene. Barriers to entry are long gone, and that\u2019s both a good and bad thing. Discerning music consumers have plenty of choices; too many, arguably. But wading through the new music yields wondrous discoveries like this album. Here\u2019s hoping that Stutter Steps\u2019 <i>Reeling<\/i> gets the wider hearing it merits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember college rock of the \u201880s? When hair bands like Bon Jovi were crowding out more interesting music on commercial FM radio, college-based radio stations like WRAS (at my alma [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[4172],"class_list":["post-18631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-stutter-steps","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26775,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18631\/revisions\/26775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}