Laura Stevenson - Wheel

Laura Stevenson – Wheel

Don Giovanni, 2013

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2015

Price: $8

The primary function of my year end lists is to create a shopping list for future record shopping. If a record cracks my top ten, I’m almost always gonna buy it if I can find it for less than $10 used. Laura Stevenson’s Wheel got a tremendous amount of play in 2013, so it’s nice to have this beauty in the collection. Stevenson has a punk rock pedigree, which earns her my ear, and her untrained voice lends an honesty to these songs that you’ll never find on the albums of the autotuned darlings of the day. That untrained-ness doesn’t stop Stevenson from belting out lines, to great emotional effect. Wheel is a supremely beautiful record, one that I can apparently put on a year after last hearing it and feel my body flooded with its power. It reminds me so vividly of the last months we spent in Minneapolis, riding my bike everywhere, enjoying the serenity of Minnesota in the springtime. I’ve gotta few albums like that in my arsenal. My Minnesota albums. Ones that, if I listen to too much I start missing that place to an unbearable degree. Someday soon, Laura Stevenson is going to kick everyone's ass and people will say, "She came out of nowhere! Such greatness!" and I'll be here over exaggeratedly pointing at this record and saying, "This came out like four years ago!" 

"Runner" - Brilliant summer jam, highlighting Stevenson's pop-chops, which are excellent, as you can see.

"The Wheel" - But my favorite bits on this record are the quiet, soul-poking ones that serve as a gravitas delivery vehicle.
 

Gut Feeling: Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt

Don Giovanni, 2013

 

Cerulean Salt is a small album. It clocks in at just over thirty minutes and most of the songs hover around the two-and-a-half minute mark. Those are the sorts of stats that make my eyes light up, and Katie Crutchfield’s understanding of concise songwriting is what really makes this album work. It makes frequently often heart wrenching songs that much more potent, and while Cerulean Salt may not be my favorite album of 2013, it’s one of the albums I have listened to the most because Crutchfield’s (mostly) quiet songs are just the sort of thing I like to listen to late at night.

Crutchfield seems to have a lot in common with Laura Stevenson. Both have played in pop-punk bands, both have released albums on well respected DIY labels (No Idea for Stevenson and Plan-It-X for Crutchfield), and both are signed to Don Giovanni records. That’s really where the comparisons end (other than the obvious fact that they are both supreme tunesmiths). Stevenson is more soulful and more idiosyncratic where Crutchfield is fragile and hits you straight in the gut with her confessional lyrics. Her songs oscillate between acoustic and electric guitar, but they almost always feels hushed, stripped down, and spare with the exception the punk-tinged pop tune “Coast to Coast,” the jaunty “Lips and Limbs,” and “Peace and Quiet,” which highlights what the album does best via its quiet verse and big catchy chorus. The quiet little songs are where this album lives and breaths. Though the songs feel small, they’re never slight. Crutchfield has one of those beautifully plain voices that really works to sell the humanity of her songs. Cerulean Salt’s most potent asset is that you feel like you’re sitting right next to this person spill their guts onto the floor.

"Misery Over Dispute"

"Peace and Quiet"

"Lips and Limbs"

Laura Stevenson - Wheel

Laura Stevenson - Wheel

Don Giovanni, 2013

Hearing an artist make their first truly cohesive album is so wonderful. Where Laura Stevenson’s sophomore LP Sit Resist showed that she is a gifted at writing songs and melodies, the album’s inconsistency in style made it feel a little half done. But the melodies are so great I listened to that album a ton. Stevenson’s third album Wheel isn’t perfect, but it is easily going to crack my top 10 at the end of the year. And the fact that it’s not perfect is pretty much a compliment, because that’s what makes Laura Stevenson worth listening to. She could have gone and smoothed off all the rough edges and idiosyncrasies that make her so special and aimed for a more Standard Female Alt-Folk Singer approach (for some reason I am thinking she could be a Kathleen Edwards type and though I don’t want to know Ms. Edwards because I think she’s a fine singer/songwriter, Stevenson’s got the rootsy fiddles lurking all around this album and she’s got the pipes to pull off straight-forward alt-country chanteuse for sure) and make something that was totally boring. This sounds like an album that was demanding to be made. One where Stevenson had to exhaust herself playing catch-up with, and as a result it’s got this vital thread that runs through it and almost breaks your heart. It’s got sad songs that sound like sad songs and sad songs that sound like happy songs. It’s got heart. So much heart. It’s not a masterpiece, but it totally shows me that Stevenson has a masterpiece inside of her that is going to unfurl on album four or five. It’s just so obvious. Wheel sounds like swinging for the fences. It doesn’t matter if there’s contact—which there is plenty of, by the way—it’s the effort. She’s got those intangibles all sorts of analysts talk about when they’re judging rookie quarterbacks. Sometimes you can just tell when someone is great, or going to be great, or in the middle of becoming great, and I think Stevenson is that last one. Truly realizing what she is capable of an artist, a singer, a songwriter and a musician. It’s great.