April 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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The Stratford 4 return with surprisingly strong LP 14 April 2003
I have to admit that the debut album from San Francisco slacker/romantic quartet The Stratford 4, which came out 14 months ago for the US, frustrated me (see link, below)—particularly because of the common ancestry they share with the very fine Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. But their first CD left me eager to see where the band would go next—and sometimes patience pays. On their new album The Stratford 4 truly come into their own with what will likely be one of my top LPs of the year. Love & Distortion, produced by Death Cab For Cutie’s Chris Walla and out four weeks ago for the US on Jetset Records, is the band’s first proper album. (The Revolt Against Tired Noises was mostly a compilation of two self-produced EPs.) Front man Chris Streng’s depressive voice, propelled forward by his own and Jake Hosek’s noisy guitars, paints a character oh so world-weary and tragically romantic—but he pulls it off so naturally that I can’t help but empathize. In fact, Streng’s penetrating, storm-clouds-with-silver-lining delivery is rather reminiscent, as other reviewers (Rolling Stone, Epitonic) have noted, of fallen angel Peter Perrett of the late, lamented Only Ones—and how many singers would ever dare aspire to such a comparison? But even in Perrett’s shadow Streng is beginning to cast his own. The album begins with the solipsistically titled Where The Ocean Meets The Eye, whose lyrics include a respectful reference to Echo & The Bunnymen’s 1980 single Rescue (it, perhaps a bit dark to today’s ears, at the time served as a bouncy pop backlash to their cheerless Pictures On My Wall single). Streng moans, “Hey, have I lost my touch? If I did, I don’t miss it too much.” Side Two (if there was such a thing on CDs) starts with a song that has all the trappings of an alternative radio hit and press fave—it has the word 'radio' in its first verse, talks about drugs, and name drops everyone from Bob Dylan to Belle & Sebastian—but the track is nearly eight minutes long, so forget radio rotation. Telephone (as the track is called) is melodramatically poignant without a trace of irony or pretension. If commercial radio didn’t suck, this noise ballad about mom, drugs, & rock 'n' roll would be a huge hit. Love & Distortion is a stormy black day with flashes of blue burning through the rain clouds, with stylistic nods to a panoply of tortured rock romantics including The Beatles, Death In Vegas, The Church, Suede, Led Zeppelin, Ride, The Telescopes, and the aforementioned Bunnymen and Only Ones. What distances The Stratford 4 from wannabes and rip-offs is that they apply all this quotation and decoration to a song-edifice that no one else could create. “Tiger girl, I’ll tell you why it always feels the same/ Even if we met or not, it always slips away/ So good bye tiger girl.” The Stratford 4 begin a month-long US tour on 24 April in Seattle. See their Website for all the dates. | The Stratford 4 | | Jetset Records | | CD from Amazon.com | | 1st LP review on Rockbites | | top of page | |
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