Marie Stella’s six song Trust starts with a distorted guitar creeping around and ends with a decaying synth line and in between is 20 minutes of joyful experiments in building and breaking crescendos. The twisting warp and weft of Bryan Bruchman and Matthew Erickson’s zipping guitars, the interplay of female vocals (lead: Sidney Bourke, accompaniment: Katherine Hulit), Derek Gierhan’s crashing drums (he sat in on the recording, now it’s Max Heinz) weave a powerful tapestry. Marie Stella is fluent in dynamic range. Blue Blood starts off simply with Sidney singing over all-or-nothing instrumentation. Guitars, bass and drums kick on and off. She sings "I don’t need a lover to bring me down" and the song changes moods, increasing the energy with a steady beat and then, as she affirms her identity, the song kicks into high gear and becomes a thumping, driven machine. The hook grabs, as the band builds into an energetic melee. Bryan’s mean guitar cuts a wandering scar on "Taken", which builds itself out of an atmospheric soup into a sinister cacophony of frenzied drums and adrenaline bass. Guitars and synth bounce off each other in a sonic mosh pit… finally resolving into a sincere declaration: "No more shenanigans." Then turns for the chaotic as Sidney and Katherine belt out a punchy chorus. Ron Harrity recorded, mixed and mastered the album at Forest City Studio. He captures the twin interplays of voices and guitars with aplomb. What could be noisy and muddy is instead a beautifully crafted and wonderfully dense soundscape. The interweaving vocals and guitars create two strong cords that Marie Stella climbs and builds on. It’s woven with deft complexity and it’s worth losing your hearing for. You can check out Trust streaming on their bandcamp page.
–Krister Rollins writes for [dog] and [pony]
