Archive for the ‘Katie Stelmanis’ Category
Join Us – Katie Stelmanis Review
For those of you who find “Running Up That Hill” a religious experience no matter how many times you’ve heard it, or for whom “Babushka” means more than “grandmother,” you might want to try Katie Stelmanis. Classically trained, Stelmanis is a local artist who supposedly gave up the opportunity to study and perform opera for the Toronto indie scene. She was originally a member of the outfit Galaxy (a trio, including Emma McKenna and Maya Postepski), she hasn’t been around too long as a solo act, and has in the last year been extremely industrious, released an EP entitled I’m Sick as well the album Join Us.
I discovered this album in fragments: I would hear a song at a friend’s place and another one from the record somewhere else. This went on until, over the course of several months, a shape began to assemble in my mind.
The first item worthy of note is Katie’s voice, which is bold, full, operatic, full of movement and theatricality, quite unforgettable. It features shades of the (albeit inimitable) Kate Bush. And while this comparison is apt and often mentioned in discussions of her music I also hear the specters of other mellodramatic popular singers, like Mirah, or Siouxie Soux . . . and actually, I would suggest Morrissey to be included on the list. The melodies she carries are deceptively simple, well-chosen, repeated so often in a song that they’re bound to stay in your head for hours after play.
The percussion often centers around heavy toms repeating very simple rhythms, while organic sounds are sometimes played/edited to resemble electronic drums. The first song, “In My Favour,” features a stop-and-go piano that crawls at a dirge-like pace over an 8-bit synth and a shrill organ, while the drums here follow the broken rhythm of the ivory keys. Like every song on the album, each element on its own performs a rather simple task, but together, with the help of a lot of subtle clicks and whirrs, they make up a delightfully eery, unsettling whole.
The title track “Join Us” begins with a killer synth line before centering around a chorus that is simply the name of the song repeated, but which features an extremely emotional delivery of either a cultish call to idol-worship or political solidarity, but probably neither since I can’t really make out the lyrics most of the time. The album also features a cover of “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman.” It’s always a solid bet to throw down some Aretha, and Katie delivers a moving rendition of the song, with a plodding piano, soft midi synths droning or whistling away in the background, and sultry vocals. For a first album, Join Us is pretty together, and I would definitely listen to it all the way through more than once. I generally don’t like assigning a number or grade to albums, but this one’s probably in the B+ to A- range, or a 7.5 to 8.0 out of 10.
