My first impression upon hearing Los Angeles-native Steph Thompson, recorded as her musical character Steffalo, was filled with both daze and awe. My lingering impression after wholly listening to her album Would You Stay is analogous to imagining that your heart was on the cusp of exiting a seemingly endless stasis: you’re existing somehow and someplace, and for some reason it’s still okay.
Would You Stay is Steffaloo’s second full-length album. After self-releasing her debut album Meet Me In Montauk, she signed with Mush Records, which presented her with numerous creative and collaborative opportunities (with Sun Glitters and Teen Daze being among artists and producers whom she’s worked with). The results show further exploration and experimentation with her voice, vision and sound, all of which are very evident on this latest musical effort.
Would You Stay is confident and deliberate. The opening eponymous track is heartbreaking, transporting listeners to that similar moment in everyone’s life where love, regret and loss became one genuinely identical feeling; the lyrics ” you should stay” repeat in an insistent manner, almost like a haunting chorale cry of love’s lost battles.
There is quite a bit of musical variety on the album. Steffaloo moves effortlessly through dreamy pop (“So I’ll Go”) to dreamy folk (“Oh No, Oh Dear”) to the ephemeral (“My Heart Beats,” which I couldn’t help but compare to Swedish singer-songwriter Anna Ternheim). If you’ve never heard Steffaloo’s music, chances are that you’ve felt what she sings about in her music. Even after the songs cease, the raw melancholy will no doubt linger.
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Track List
01. Would You Stay
02. So I’ll Go
03. Can’t You See
04. I’m Sorry
05. Lonely Night
06. Oh No, Oh Dear
07. If You Were My Baby
08. Rainy Fingers
09. Fight & Flail
10. I Would Have Loved You
11. My Heart Beats
12. The Whale And Me
13. You
[photo via Mush Records]
Note: Article first published as Music Review: Steffaloo – Would You Stay on Blogcritics.