Stellastarr: Stellastarr : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Stellastarr singer Shawn Christensen has a monster of a voice -- sometimes he bays and yelps (as on the excellent "My Coco"), and sometimes he unleashes a guttural roar ("Jenny"). To their credit, his bandmates don't let Christensen steal the show, weaving sexy, impassioned New Wave into feedback-laden guitar rock for a sound that is part Pixies, part New Order, and demonstrates a truly elegant sense of pacing and development. "Moongirl" opens with three minutes of distorted noise, but despite that fact it never once meanders; "Somewhere Across Forever" explodes over and over again in a rush of epic climaxes. "When the shadows washed away," Christensen sings on "A Million Reasons," "I was painting larger ones." But as he mopes, bassist Amanda Tannen sighs optimistically in the background, a beautiful counterpoint. Like this stirring debut, her sweet voice rescues bliss from gloom.

JON CARAMANICA
(RS 936, November 27, 2003)