The digest version of this review might read: Guitars speak louder than words. But the stories that Chris Grabau’s chord swipes, ricocheting overdrive, and jackhammer rhythms tell: youthful dreams dying, the constant yearning — “Don’t know!” Grabau sceams at a question we never quite hear — the feeling of being entrapped by nothing clear, not knowing where you are nor hardly where you’ve been. Stillwater beats back angst with the roar of doubled and tripled guitars; Michael Rose’s racing, time-shifting drum work; and John O’Brien’s fast, urging bass work. They’ve captured much of the energy of the power trio sound, and seem as indebted to The Jam and Nirvana as they do early, guitar-mad Uncle Tupelo.
The bubbling, countrified “Michael’s Demons” is the best rocker on the disc, and probably should have been first. The crushing guitars wash in as counterpoints to Grabau’s sweetest jangle; the song has space, lucid harmonies, the kind voice of a harmonica, and equal parts energy and melodic clarity. Ultimately, what’s missing from this heated, stormy debut are simply enough songs built around memorable melodies and a language with the urgency to match the playing. The songs have such frighteningly potent guitar hooks — the pounding, disjointed “Textbook Answer”, for one — but the lyrics border on afterthoughts, half-digested notions of what, as songs, they should aspire to be.
The strongest songs — “Porch Light”, “Michael’s Demons”, and especially “Not So Far Away”, with its genuinely classic-sounding refrain, “I wish, hope, pray there’s a way/But I can’t see you, not so far away” — do indeed find those qualities. It’s reassuring to hear a young band rock this hard, this tightly, and also to hear the promise of something more.