STEPHEN STEINBRINK - Arranged Waves

Stephen Steinbrink, an unconventional American songwriter, must have grown a thick skin by now when it comes to his almost total lack of recognition. He's already put out a good number of albums and EPs that online are credited, interchangeably, either to him or to the band of acolytes he's been leading for about a decade, French Quarter. What little visibility he's managed to gather dates back to his very first steps, still in his native Arizona: the band's promising eponymous debut (2007), the subsequent split with Andrew Jackson Jihad, and the decent solo debut under his own name, "Ugly Unknowns" (2009), all released around the time he was twenty. Since then, plenty of obscure, under-the-radar work, a handful of fine pages of weird songwriting ("I Drew A Picture" being the best, two years ago), and the usual black hole of attention.

Trying to pull him out of his chronic anonymity today is a small English label, Melodic, which has taken on the task of reissuing (with just a couple of non-essential omissions) his most recent self-produced effort, that "Arranged Waves" which was already snubbed back in 2013, just like its predecessors before it.

Quiet by nature to the point of paroxysm, sparing and skittering in its arrangements but blessed with a simple, contagious candor, stylistically it draws close to the standards of a North American-rooted indie-pop, riding the long wave of Shins and Fruit Bats (the latest, delicate little gem from Eric D. Johnson's band comes forcefully to mind on "Synesthetic Ephemera", if anything even less exuberant than its model), revealing on the side more than a passing affinity with the proverbial gentleness of the Weepies, for those who still remember them. Nothing sensational, then, even though it's the product of graceful songwriting that is — hard as it may be to believe — already less shy than at the start of his career.

Unadorned in decoration that remains slight and exceedingly transparent, Stephen enchants with graceful refrains and a caressing, boyish voice. What takes shape is an orderly, diligent record with extremely delicate contours, all soft light and soft focus as on the soothing "A Simple Armature Of Your Ideal World", a kind of muffled dream that makes his enduring love for John Lennon shine through more than ever. His debt of gratitude and inspiration to Elliott Smith also seems undeniable, even though Steinbrink is keen to pursue his own path, open to a wonder that may be naive but is far less raw or direct. Affable, intimate but certainly not harrowing, he entertains gently without promising anything he can't be sure to deliver. More rarely he dresses up as a Scandinavian minimalist, like when, in the stylization of the more rarefied and ecstatic "Tangerine", he closely recalls the Teitur of his glory days.

The results are especially rewarding on the enchanting "Sand Mandalas" and on "Animate Dust", where the essentialism of the songwriting reveals a happy melodic inclination in a modest but dignified package, free of formal additives and with more than one nod to the less flashy side of the Eighties (emblematic is the subtle spell of "It's So Pretty (What You Did For Me)", little more than a refrain frozen at a distance, in a past that is perhaps more imagined than real). "It Takes A Lot To Change A Mind" is another perhaps excessively Lennon-esque episode, but well disguised by an understatement that evidently borders on the pathological, making clear how the singer moves with a thousand precautions yet also with grace, trying to win us over through minimal shifts, marginal variations on recurring themes, within structures that in other hands would be called formulaic.

Young Steinbrink is skilled at captivating with very little. Without ever truly triggering that fateful leap of the heart, but at the same time sparing the listener any blemishes or gaudy solutions. In his own way, a talented impressionist of song. And a decent painter of light, too. Charmingly inessential, seemingly impalpable, yet capable of revealing a substance not lacking in maturity. This regardless of a fame that, we have no doubt, will keep turning its back on him.

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07/09/2014