Stalemate by Seedbed
'Stalemate' by Seedbed
Scooterbabe might not be a band or name familiar to many people outside of Athens, Georgia. Yet the band spent over a half-decade trying to lay down a final album that never came out, and now songwriter JJ Posway has turned the recordings from that band, his band, into the debut album from Seedbed.
Although the results feature Posway and the rest of the last Scooterbabe lineup–singer and keyboardist Anna Staddon, bassist Michael Buice, and drummer Zach Spires—it’s Athens-area producer Terence Chiyezhan, with his indie-rock and hip-hop experience, who helps Posway reassemble Scooterbabe into Seedbed.
Chiyezhan also helps mix the material, gradually lifting the indie-pop elements of the former band toward the more polished alt-rock force of the newer collective. Posway and the other personnel do considerable lifting as well, adding instruments like mandolin, violin, bass clarinet and banjo.
The variety of musical approaches matches the varieties of instrumentation: in “Unit 4,” Staddon’s parched vocals drift across a tidal hiss and music-box bells; “Ccccccccccc” [sic] switches between Staddon and Posway verses as acoustic and electric guitars ring over a tricksy rhythm; and “Fingertips Like Ice (Sebastian)” tangles Americana picking with modern-retro keyboard washes and suddenly grungy electric riffs.
Posway often sings as if he’s a younger cousin of They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh and John Linnell, with their maturely childlike phrasing. He also carries a darker, lower tone when accompanying Staddon’s more deliberately fragile and wavering tone.
They maintain a buttressing consistency against Seedbed’s tendency to bury the music in bursts of noise and then leap up into comparative clarity, as if a song like “Mouse at Your Feet” wants to burrow into dirt before cleansing itself in post-thunderstorm air.
Stalemate ends with its title track, a folk-pop song that draws from the Decemberists and the softer side of George Harrison’s early solo work. Yet it also finishes with electronic swirls and studio chatter, emphasizing a project at once finished and irregular.
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