The tech industry’s new-money piranhas haven’t gnawed all the weirdness out of San Francisco just yet. Consider Kelley Stoltz, whose three records considered here are as strange as pop music that wants to stay pop can get.
Stoltz’s very fi rst releases were four-track aff airs, but nothing like lo-fi —this is a guy who’s clearly always wanted to play the studio like a single great big instrument—and In Triangle Time sounds like the music’s finally as big through the speakers as it always played in his head. Though heavily produced, In Triangle Time and 4 Cuts—the latter a spillover EP drawn from the same recording sessions—don’t sound overworked at all. And as much as you can hear Stoltz trying to weird up the music by playing around with pitch waver, echo, sound effects and other button-and-fader filters, he’s loath to let the music stray too far from the pop sound he’s obviously drawn to. Think Pet Sounds, not “Revolution 9,” and you’re in the right territory.
Even on Scuzzy Inputs (credited to Stoltz’s “Willie Weird” alter ego), whose tracks are vastly more redolent of bongwater-fueled knob twiddling, Stoltz’s music and eff ects are aimed toward songcraft, clearly and unwaveringly. What’s most interesting about Stoltz is how he seems to have absorbed the aesthetic of genuine American musical oddballs like Jandek and Daniel Johnston—I defy anyone to listen to “Destroyer & Drones” and not hear Johnston’s voice—and then filed down the rougher edges so they fit neatly into American pop forms.
You could call Stoltz’s music less unique than its source material, I guess. But we already have Jandek and Johnston; Stoltz is a Jon Brion-style new romantic songwriter whose pop songs borrow from the bizarre trappings of those kinds of oddballs. And that kind of composer, we have fewer of. Worth checking out.
—Eric Waggoner
