The Stollers – Stationary Sun

Debuts don’t often come this late in life. The Stoller brothers, Brad and Lesley, are experienced songwriters and musicians who have worked apart and in various configurations for over four decades. Despite this long career, their album Stationary Sun marks the first time that the brothers have enshrined their songwriting efforts in full-length album form. They reveal themselves to be songwriters working from a vast frame of reference that they apply to their material with style and sophistication. There are a number of expected turns here and the Stollers aren’t afraid to embrace tradition, but they are equally unafraid to overturn the listener’s apple cart with a number of twists that will surprise anyone. It’s a cliché, but Stationary Sun has something for nearly every music devotee.

It begins with the expansive, melodically powerful “Into the Brand New Day”. The brass, including harmonica, seamlessly blends with other instruments like piano and organ to create an intensely musical foundation for the vocals. “Only a Penny” follows a similar template, but the songwriting has an even more chiseled quality here never surrendering a sliver of daylight. These are impressively solid songs that rarely slacken or play to type. “Loredana” is a shockingly successful turn into Latin music with its scintillating rhythm section work and evocative vocal. It shows real fearlessness for the duo to tackle such material, but our expectations that it exists outside their purview likely says more about us as listeners than the Stollers as musicians and songwriters.

“You Can Come Home (With Me)” is, unquestionably, the album’s most successful ballad and a carefully paced three am blues sure to move many listeners. While the title suggests a light strain of humor, the vocal delivery has a soft, unsentimental air that prevents the song from sinking in bathos and cliché. The Stollers turn their hands back to pure folk with the gentle “Between the Earth and the Moon” and the coupling of lyric and melody makes it one of the album’s best tracks. “Food in the Morning Blues” goes further than the earlier “You Can Come Home (With Me)” into purely blues territory and results in one of the album’s edgiest tracks. The edgiest track on the album, however, is undoubtedly “Culture War” thanks to its crackling display of fusion virtuosity. The surefooted melding of jazz, rock, and restless tempo shifts plays well with a wild vocal spewing out a social oriented, but well written, lyric. A similarly adventurous spirit fuels “The Two Julians”, but the lyrical focus turns back to a more literary aim with a character study implied by the title.

Stationary Sun bristles, sweeps, and glides with surprises and pouring new wine into old bottles inventiveness. The Stollers are unafraid to try anything once, but they never leap blindly into their risk-taking. Instead, they rarely make a misstep and bring elements to their material that stand out from the vast majority of similarly themed releases emerging over the last few years.

The Stollers – Stationary Sun 

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TheStollers/ 

9 out of 10 stars. 

BANDCAMP: https://thestollers.bandcamp.com/releases 

Cyrus Rhodes