Stimmerman live at The Loading Dock 9/1/2019
I feel compelled to review this album, there is a first time for everything. Stimmerman has played The Loading Dock twice, over those two years of hearing this band live and listening to recordings, I was totally unprepared for what Eva Lawitts and her Wonderpark cohorts were about to drop with Goofballs. Ok, maybe I had a hint with the single releases of the pummeling prog scree of Dentist vs. Pharmacist and then the insistently catchy yet still just as pummeling (but in a more sensitive way?) It Shows. Both of these tunes are worlds of emotion in a nice and digestible 3 minute package for those of us with short attention spans. The addition of Adam O’Farrill on trumpet takes each of these tracks into a different sonic dimension that fits like your favorite black Levi 510s.
When I got my ears on this record I immediately had that wonderful feeling of giddy excitement mixed with some emotion that made my eyes well up. The first track is sonically so surprising, I really wasn’t expecting to hear something of that nature right off the bat, it felt like a different band than the one that I had seen / heard live and listened to their recorded output. This is a good thing in my book. I love music that surprises me and offers up something totally unexpected and Goofballs achieved this in spades.
The first thing I did was tell my two favorite musical explorers, Kerri and Carl, about it along with a boom link (probably too early in the morning). I immediately bought it on bandcamp and promptly downloaded the sound files. Im old school and my car is as well, we both are still all about CDs. Dusting off my old macbook I burned this record to CD-r so I could listen to it on repeat in the car. It has been a while since I’ve done anything like that, if felt good.
After driving around with this record for a week I am happy to report that Goofballs is a start-to-finish record, it loops from end back to beginning and is a journey inside one of the most creative musical minds I have heard in a long time. Prometheus starts out with a brief motorik beat and transitions into something similar to contemporary classical… if you can imagine that! A wall of punk-familiar guitar feedback kicks off Mark Twain and deeply dives into prog, jazz, and orchestral indie rock insanity. Eva’s vocals shine on this tune and combined with instrumental sections create memorable melodic landscapes in sharp contrast of each other but yet sit comfortably like a well planned double exposure. The spooky loping intro of Child’s Play hits on the amazing dynamics Stimmerman plays with, from a hushed vocal effected quiet delay fog to triumphant screaming delivery, throw in riffy guitar and drum bridge sections and you have taken a little journey inside a range of emotions that communicates to your soul in the most abstract and stimulating way.
Disclaimer - I will not be talking about lyrical content here at all. I can’t parse lyrics and if I do they are usually not the intended words so for the duration of my typing I will only be talking about how the lyrics sound (to me) and not what they mean. I am sure that if I were to read along with the lyrics I would find them funny and strange and thought provoking, another layer of the onion yet to be explored.
It Shows, for me, is the stand out track on this record. I have played in twice on two different radio shows featuring material from musicians that have played at The Loading Dock. Eva shows us in this tune how easily she can write a hit song that doesn’t suck. For me this is pop music. I could play this for anyone and feel confident that they wouldn’t think I was totally insane in my love of this tune. Don’t get me wrong, this tune is super weird, it also goes in many different directions at once all in three-and-a-half minutes from early indie rock jangles to crushing riffs to synth melancholy woven along with beautifully layered vocals that cut through the mix and right into your heart. We are only 4 songs in… The pacing of this record is great, like a passing landscape that changes every few minutes so you can never take your face away from that window.
Sparse scuttle beats and vapors of melodies kick off Porcelain Hand, the vibe is strong with this one… It has the persistence of electronic music played by bipeds. The gradient of vibe subtly shifts into descending guitar riffs and trailing vocals and progressively more heavy and out of control until a brief breather break of weird guitar noises and then diving right back into the melee with soaring trumpet blasts of notes like legalized glitter.
We now take a trip to cleanse the sonic palette, I would imagine a little Eva wandering far out in Brooklyn without her parents and spinning out this ode to Coney Island Creek, a place that may or may not exist only in her imagination. Even as sweet at this super short tune is there are feathers of the strange creeping in, something that is becoming a familiar feeling on this record but never seems unwarranted or out of place. Stimmerman uses weirdness in the way that sets up a range of possibilities and takes you out of comfort zone and into something entirely different and I don’t know what it is and that is totally ok.
Transitioning directly in to a full on punk attack of what sounds like a ferocious battle royale in Dentist Vs Pharmacist. Just like the rest of the record, this tune is not one dimensional but creates contrast with a sweet and slightly off kilter feeling groove punctuated with Eva’s vocals, dexterous basslines and trumpet, dissolving into a track change in Long Formal Letter. Another surprise listen here that lets the tune sit on its own stylistically from the rest of the album but on deeper listens fits into the larger 1000 piece small scale puzzle that is Goofballs. You definitely get the sense that Stimmerman is fucking with you but in a way that doesn’t make you feel bad about going in on the joke whole hog but they are right there with you enjoying the direction of the muse.
If you think I am going to give you a run down of every track on this record… think again. You gotta listen for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Goofballs is a heavy record but not one that you need to study up for before you dive in. There is a deeply abstract side to all the music here but peppered with the right amount of melodic hooks and ballsy riffs and killing drumming that makes the whole tapestry stand up on its own and demand further listening and a deeper plunge into the realm of Stimmerman. I think most surprising of all this record is how tender it feels as a whole, this is not shredding for the sake of showing off choppiness but really well crafted and thoughtfully sequenced series of moods that exist in the same analogous sonic color palette. You can also stream this on Spotify as well as go for gold and pick up the cassette.
Check out some photos from two years ago when Stimmerman was just emerging from the ashes of Sister Helen. Even then, with the benefit of hindsight, it makes sense that we are here now listening to Goofballs. The essential playfulness and shreddability of this band early on was beginning to make the outline of shapes of what this music has become.
Photos by Zach Sar 10/26/2018