Born and raised in Phoenix, Stephen Steinbrink has been bouncing around the West Coast indie underground for over a decade now, releasing numerous records of bittersweet, folk-inflected pop on a handful of tiny labels. While the 27-year-old songwriter is a dedicated nomad as a performer—he’s been touring off and on since his teens—Steinbrink’s music is a deeply intimate affair, a series of bedroom obsessions brought to life.
Steinbrink’s last album, 2014’s excellent, wide-ranging *Arranged Waves, *garnered some attention outside his close-knit DIY circles. And *Anagrams *is sure to boost Steinbrink’s profile further. Recorded over two years in a de-sanctified church on the northern coast of Washington state, *Anagrams *is Steinbrink’s most fully realized vision yet—an album of compulsively well-crafted, yet warmly inviting guitar-pop that calls to mind the Beach Boys, early Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac without losing an iota of Steinbrink’s quirky charm. Arrangements that felt loose or tossed off on past records have been tightened here; vocal lines that once wandered now sparkle and shine. There is nary a note out of place.
Anagrams is a close sonic cousin to Elliott Smith’s later work, particularly XO. Both Steinbrink’s record and XO use classic pop songwriting tools and organic, fine-grained production to uncover (or in some cases mask) some very dark stuff: depression, alienation, drug addiction, relationships in decline. On “Impossible Hand,” Steinbrink recounts a love grown cold over an urbane mix of shimmering acoustic guitar, twinkling piano and perky bass. On “Shine a Light on Him,” Steinbrink imagines himself coming to after blacking out in the middle of a car crash (or a night of heavy substance abuse; it’s not clear). “It’s easy to forget what you can’t remember,” he sings over soft fingerpicked guitar.
But *Anagrams *is no secondhand Elliott Smith record; Steinbrink is far too idiosyncratic for imitation. In fact, Anagrams’ best songs break the singer-songwriter mold entirely. The eerily hypnotic “Building Machines” nods to Death Cab for Cutie and early post-rock, as its chiming guitars march head-on into a wall of vicious feedback. The breezy title track, meanwhile, is an irresistible slice of mid-’80s indie rock—all bitter heartbreak and R.E.M. jangle.
Steinbrink is clearly the type of guy who’s always living in his head, in his studio, or both. He’s also hyper self-aware and hyper-articulate. All of which means that his music can sometimes turn precious and claustrophobic, reveling in the minutia of this or that memory or this or that worry. “Creosote,” from 2011’s *Rennet *EP, is about staying at home and doing laundry. 2013’s I Drew a Picture is essentially a concept album about Phoenix’s water-shortage crisis. * *
With a few minor exceptions, Steinbrink avoids these traps on *Anagrams *by pulling away from himself and his hometown—writing abstract songs about his late-20s malaise with a more universal appeal—and by improving his craft, layering sharper melodies over increasingly sophisticated arrangements. Steinbrink’s music—so often insular, gorgeous in its way yet tentative—has grown up, becoming wiser and more confidently strange, ready to embrace the world outside his bedroom window.
