Let's climb into the wayback machine for a moment, shall we? It's the mid-90s, and the major labels (there were six back then!) are marching their A&R; armies through the suburbs of America, scooping up every band with a couple of guitars and a serviceable melody in search of the next "alternative" sensation, thereby ensuring well-stocked cutout bins for decades to come. Epic plucks the Velvet Crush from their Providence basement, and they go on to record their finest album, Teenage Symphonies to God, for the label in 1994, releasing it on Creation in the UK. Epic brought the Crush their best chance at a real hit, but it was a match that couldn't last, and they were dropped as the alternative boom collapsed and gave way to the recorded frustrations of ambiguously irked rap-metal meatheads.
Crush principals Paul Chastain and Ric Menck regrouped in 1998 to revive the band, but fell flat with Heavy Changes, an album that unsuccessfully attempted to deny their pop prowess and cast the band as ballsy rock 'n' rollers. They seemed to realize their misstep, though, as 1999's Free Expression was an expertly crafted, refined tribute to the guitar pop of the 60s and 70s, and last year's Soft Sounds continued that arc by presenting the duo as older, wiser balladeers. So I guess that basically makes Stereo Blues a midlife crisis record, a reactionary oh-my-god-we-don't-rock-anymore retreat to their basement days to rummage for the spark and fire they once possessed. It's not a flop on the level of Heavy Changes, but it's still a fool's gambit, as their last two records have proven their facility for crisp pop sophistication, and this one merely proves that they went in the right direction when they gave up rough-edged rock abandon.
One of the album's principle plagues is the near total lack of low-end-- all that unsupported treble gets tiresome after a while. There's a bass hiding in there, peeking out from behind the overdriven rhythm guitars and ponderously formless solos like a shy mammal trying not to be seen. This is most egregiously apparent on "The Connection", a plodding 7-minute dinosaur whose melody I can't remember and whose strangely polite freakout coda ought to come with a bottle of Motrin. These ponderous guitar noodlings turn up all over the place, ruining "Son of Ray" (is that a reference to "Sister Ray"?), and intruding on several otherwise strong tracks. It mystifies me why people as obviously talented as Menck and Chastain would insist on being so tuneless in the name of "rocking." Gentlemen, please, if shitting on a fretboard is your idea of rock music, kindly return to stately balladeering and reminding me why I liked Big Star.
Dammit, though, it's really not all bad. These guys can't help writing a fantastic melody, and they do it quite a few times here, kicking out a picture-perfect anthem for 1993 in "Fall Awake", its sweet, double-tracked vocals overcoming bombastic drums and a chorus guitar riff that interjects in a manner far too reminiscent of the little doodles in Creed's "Higher" for comfort. "I Want You Now" rocks for real, building on a concise, Incesticide-worthy riff and a choppy verse melody for just under two minutes of spiky pop bliss that wisely crunches to a halt before any ass-ugly guitar solo can kill the momentum. "California Incline" isn't so lucky, but it's still pretty marvelous, retreating from an opening squeal of feedback into an easy groove full of loose strumming and clean, harmonious guitar-- it builds to a spot-on chorus, too, before taking off into one of the album's more passable jams.
Even the good stuff can't wash away the dross, though, and there's too much of it here to make this album recommendable to anyone but a Menck/Chastain completist (they do exist). Free Expression, a record that plays to all of their strengths, was just reissued last year, and in lieu of the out-of-print Teenage Symphonies, that's the one to get. It seems likely that this is just a passing phase for the band, but here's hoping they turn it down for the next and just return to what they do best.
