A Wormhole is a Freeway to the Stars by Grooblen: Album Review
A Wormhole is a Freeway to the Stars by Grooblen: Album Review
Ellie Stokes, a Bay Area artist known by the moniker Grooblen, has released her newest album, A Wormhole is a Freeway to the Stars. When asked how she would describe the album’s sound, Stokes responded, saying, “It’s a collagic playlist taking the listener on a multi-genre journey”. And that it is. Serving blended elements of prog-rock and club-jazz with a distinctly indie base in a kind of kaleidoscopic, psychedelic dish, A Wormhole is a Freeway to the Stars moves slickly from track to track through a myriad of influences and sounds.
Beginning with the song “Hello Again”, Grooblen makes it clear she’s boldly unafraid of embracing the West Coast cool jazz that pops up in numerous ways at numerous points on the album by giving us a soft and breathy choral inauguration backed by sparsely laid piano chords. The arrangements culminate in swells, bursting and falling into the spiraling arpeggiation of the pianoforte that comprises the body of the work.
Conversely, the following piece “Gastropod” kicks off with an intense, repetitious, and maniacal descent into an incredibly smooth allegory for depressive insecurity, comparing feelings of fear and apathy to the experience of being a slimy creature inside a shell. This is a point in the album where prog-rock is on prominent display. The track is capped, interluded, and caboosed by about six notes played in rapid and intentionally abrasive succession repetitively until these waves of doom-inducing ferocity break into confidently strutting flows that provide a cathartic contrast to the insanity.
“Jane Fonda of the Ship” is the most straightforward jam track on the album, Grooblen gets in the pocket here and sticks to the groove, relying on the rhythm guitar to pull a majority of the weight. Lyrically, the song seems to be a reflection of the absurdity of anticipating what’s to come in life. She seems self-aware of her anxiety toward the future and can identify the futility in that. Additionally, she compares her neurosis to a clown wearing a crown as if to imply that she’s taking things in her life seriously that aren’t meant to be fretted over. It’s possible then, that “Jane Fonda” replacing the word “captain” in the title is meant to be taken as meaning the author views the steering of her own life’s ship as being a kind of joke.
“Escher Girl” has, without a doubt, the catchiest chorus on the LP. Stokes’ voice shines on it, as she chants the ever-relatable mantra “I wish I didn’t have to feel this way”. Again, it feels evident that Grooblen is trying to capture the spirit of cool jazz in their sound, utilizing staccato in a form reminiscent of Parisian club jazz. They’re achieving a unique and modern sound on the album, no doubt, but at the same time, there’s something unmistakably classic or vintage about what’s happening here.
Sonically, the album comes across like the soundtrack to a Woody Allen movie that gained consciousness, found out Woody Allen married Soon Yi-Previn, and as a subsequent act of retaliatory independence had a really weird, kind of aggressive drug phase to try making sense of its life. There’s a casual neurosis that characterizes this album which also runs parallel to Woody Allen’s work. It’s not the most flattering comparison given the posterity of that man’s legacy but putting that aside, it’s a compliment.
Photo: Jozie Zamjahn
A lot is going on with this album. Lyrically it’s intensely personal and sonically it’s entirely unique. The themes of dealing with negative emotions are tackled ambiguously enough for anyone to project their own life onto them, which is a staple for any good pop album. The sounds laid out across the twenty-eight-minute playtime are theatrical and have a lot of range in style while maintaining consistency and cohesion throughout, nothing here feels forced or out of place. The production is warm, the performances are soulful and there’s a clubbish charm to each track– like it’s an album that was crafted to be performed in intimate spaces. There’s certainly nothing pretentious or grandiose to A Wormhole is a Freeway to the Stars, it’s decadent and intentionally gaudy in the best way but it’s far from being self-important and it isn’t trying to over-extend itself or be anything larger than life. Grooblen has put on a good show with this one,. It’s worth listening to for anyone wondering what psychedelic-cabaret-dream-pop-punk sounds like because there’s no better place to start than with the genre’s originator.
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