Promote This: Anne Stott, Noah’s Tape & Stuporhero
Promote This is a long-running NadaMucho.com feature wherein we write about emerging and unsigned bands. This installment features New York singer-songwriter Anne Stott, Berlin electronic act Noah’s Tape and local pop/punk band Stuporhero.
Anne Stott – “No Words” and “We Are Here”
Anne Stott, a New York-based singer-songwriter, is roughly 60 percet of the way there.
“We Are Here” is extremely rigid. Between the GarageBand quality arrangement and her lackadaisical vocals, sometimes adopting a very bland alt-rawk accent, there’s nothing memorable about it. “We are peace, we dreams, we are tomorrow” she sings, half-persuasive and with absolutely no emotion.
“No Words” exists in the same realm at “We Are Here” but is Stot’s version of a slow-burning ballad and is similarly flavorless.
Stott clearly possesses the musical talent and ability to write songs but seems to drop the ball as soon as she steps into the studio. Without any rawness, her take on rock music is closer to karaoke backing tracks than anything else. – Cameron Deuel
Noah’s Tape – “Pin Me” and “Renegade”
Berlin-based Decibel Festival favorite Noah’s Tape (Jessica Nay) brings excellent arranging skills to her blend of echo-covered, languorous vocals and synthetic drums, keys, strings backed indie pop. All the different layers are right where they need to be, giving “Pin Me” a depth that most electro pop doesn’t attempt. “Renagade”, also from the recent Green EP, edges the tempo up to “danceable”, but loses the beat enough to keep listeners at “head bob.” A pair of guest guitars add a nice coda to this catchy, modern bedroom pop song. – Abe Beeson
Stuporhero – “Spittle” and “Waste Away”
Stuporhero is a garden-variety slacker-punk outfit that’s based in Seattle. The longer songs in their discography scrape past the two-minute mark but all rely on the tenets of the decades-old genre: nasal vocals, breakneck speeds, and finding clarity within the chaos.
Both tracks offered up by Stuporhero are, if anything, brief. “Spittel” contains such lyrics as “Go fight win win,” “give up don’t try,” and “we need to talk about Kevin.” In fact, those are all the lyrics, though it would be hard to know it through the calamity. “Waste Away” is even snottier but more substantial both lyrically and musically.
The beauty of Stuporhero is how their music is laid out without any care of judgement, especially what’s being written here, in favor of just fucking making music for the sake of doing so. Fuck yes. Listen to Stuporhero. – Cameron Deuel