album cover painting by John Barron
words by Chance Solem-Pfeifer
You could say “Right Back Where We Start” is the song on its new album, Perspectives & Perceptions, that sound the least like Stonebelly.
It’s a manic, horn-driven tailspin, something like a ballroom on fire — Stonebelly’s singer and chief songwriter Mike Hollon likes to think of it as “Speakeasy punk” or “Flapper punk” — but Stonebelly, like its jolly Buddha logo, is optimistically all-consuming and all-inclusive with genres. The songs that sound least like their core of psychedelic roots rock have a part in shaping that core.
“Some people have their ‘funk-band’ or their ‘rock-band’ or ‘blues-band’ or ‘whatever’ band, but I never really wanted to do that,” Hollon says. “I just wanted to have a band, with people I enjoy making music with and experiment with sounds and styles and see what happens.”
“Right Back Where We Start” features Stonebelly’s main trio of players, with Hollon on vocals and guitar, Kevin Korus on drums and Scott Dworak on bass (although for live performances Dworak has left the band and been replaced by Dave Mejia). Tim Aukerman and Brian Morrow supplement the track with trombone and tenor saxophone, respectively.
Lyrically, the song cycles through the open space of interpretability that defines a lot of Hollon’s songwriting, both vaguely personal or vaguely political (skeptical of war, government and consumerism), but coming together with aggressive declaration: “We think we’re making progress / always end up in the red / we always end up right back where we start.”
As Hollon’s voice streaks upward alongside the horn pops and drawls the songs title, there’s a distinct pattern in the song, music and lyrics following each other, ending up precisely where it started.
Hollon explains the song’s meaning two ways, one personal and one relatively political. The first is something like Sisyphus and his boulder and the second calls into question more philosophical practices.
“It’s like you can try so hard sometimes to get ahead — you can work and save and do your best and you finally get a little money and your car breaks down, or you get your bike stolen, or you think things are going well and you have some kind of set-back that puts you behind — that’s life. But it also speaks of how many people don’t even realize the things that they buy into or believe are actually putting them behind.”
If Stonebelly’s debut of two years ago, Free Spirit : Lost Soul played on a binary way of looking at artists and creative people in vocationally-driven societies, Perspectives & Perceptions finds itself less organized, pushing away categories for a varied meditation on relationships, the citizen’s place in politics and nostalgia.
In that way there’s movement, even if it’s circular. “Right Back Where We Start” transitions into a sort of wishful, acoustic navel-gazing song called “Back In Time” wherein the singer longs for a bygone open road. It’s not tightly conceived enough to be a concept album, but Hollon says that sequencing the album thematically was important.
“We have so many avenues for so many things now, but it doesn’t seem like we are really any happier or accomplish more – we’re just more distracted.”
Stonebelly will release Perspectives & Perceptions on April 12 at Zoo Bar with Rock Paper Dynamite. RSVP for that show here. And listen to them perform live this Monday on Hear Nebraska FM on 89.3 KZUM.
Listen to “Right Back Where We Start” here:
Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s managing editor. Reach him at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.