ALBUM REVIEW: South Of The Sun – The Stone Eye
“What if Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain secretly wrote songs for QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and ALICE IN CHAINS?” muses the press notes that accompany South Of The Sun, the sixth album from Philadelphia-native stoner rockers THE STONE EYE. Well it’s certainly an interesting concept, so let’s break that down.
The clearest comparison by far is to QOTSA: there is no escaping the influence here. That heady mix of whiskey-soaked desert blues rock and hard-nosed, intricate guitar passages is ever present, and lead vocalist Stephen Burdick has clearly taken notes for his homage to Josh Homme. Halfway House carries all that dangerous charisma QOTSA brings in spades and sounds as if it could fall apart at any minute, if not for the riffs driving the song to a brass-laden conclusion, while Riots provides a real injection of fervour for the album, sounding closer to a THEM CROOKED VULTURES offcut than anything else.
Homage To Micah is a lush, ethereal instrumental arrangement that offers a Frank Zappa-esque respite 10 tracks into the album. Meanwhile Witches & Raptures is a delightfully intoxicating treat of twists and turns that rock’s greatest enigma would have adored.
The references to Kurt Cobain and ALICE IN CHAINS are tougher to distinguish. Granted, there are grungey, garage rock passages laced throughout the record. At a stretch, the verses of 60/26 would not sound wholly out of place on Dirt, and album closer Saylo would have been a nice fit for NIRVANA’s MTV Unplugged, but it’s not an overwhelmingly obvious comparison to make.
For all of THE STONE EYE’s lofty comparable aspirations though, there are niggling issues throughout that ought to be addressed. Production is all over the place: Burdick’s vocal style does not lend itself to being lower in the mix and as a result, he often feels washed out, nowhere more so than on album opener Who’s There. Elsewhere, drums are so exaggerated that you can physically feel them. In terms of song structures, guitar and drum fills are so crammed into a bar that the resulting amalgam of notes takes away from the flow of the track completely (see Presence Of The Mind).
The biggest stick in the craw though is that with 13 tracks and clocking in at just under 55 minutes, South Of The Sun feels too long. There are worse problems to have of course, and you can only admire the work rate of a band putting out their sixth full length album in just seven years. However, highlights such as Ethereal Visions and the aforementioned 60/26 make the shortcomings all the more frustrating, because this is a band and record that is undoubtedly brimming with ideas, but they just fall painstakingly short of producing a great album.
Rating: 7/10
South Of The Sun is set for release on October 15th via Eclipse Records.
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