Modern romantics are harder to spot these days. They come in all shapes and sizes, and usually, show little ambition or desire to stand out. This is a far cry from the romantics of the past whose boots could be heard clicking down the pavement from miles away, whose clothes stopped onlookers in their tracks, and whose words were designed to draw attention to them.
In our modern world, nobody has the time or the attention span to be the same thing for too long, to be just one kind of person. Of course, this is something that is also reflected in the music being made. It’s a nice time to destroy all stereotypes, to get used to nice kinds of mavericks.
At the heart of the matter, Stinkus is a pop songwriter and a jokester. But, as the songs on the recent album, “I love you, trackstar,” the man behind the jokey appellation is an artist of great depth and great superficiality, often in the same song. This helps to make an intriguing and rarely dull listen.
Just pay attention to the opening track, “Plastic Blue,” a track that brings to mind ‘90s laidback slacker-rockers like Pavement, or genre benders like Beck. You’d think that Stinkus was just playing some kind of practical joke on the listener until the pristine, clever vocal hook makes you realise that their understanding of what makes a pop song work is great.
Thankfully, in many ways, nothing quite like the catchy opening track ever happens on the record again. The songs are still memorable, just not repetitive in terms of style. “Falling in Love” is an acoustic alt-rocker that feels written while sitting on the beach, even though the songwriter confesses to penning most of the tracks in a cabin down in Michigan.
“Casino” is the closest that the album has to a modern, palatable lo-fi indie-pop a la Alex G or MJ Lenderman. And, if it’s true that branding is vital for a modern artist’s commercial success, I’m glad to report that Stinkus can hardly decide across a single song if he wants the music to portray him as a loveable goofball, or as a melancholy-ridden loner.
But it’s all because you get the sneaking suspicion that Stinkus really believes in it all, in all the good times and the misery that music creates around it. On “Holy Virgin,” he sounds like Matt Healy after firing the rest of the 1975. On the minimalist alt-rock of “Coming to an End,” he spits lyrics like a man whose amphetamine high’s about to run out any moment. And, on the quirky “Maggie My Dog,” Stinkus delivers the kind of chorus you’d imagine could soundtrack adolescent beer pong for many years to come.
Where does it all leave us? Suitably entertained, with an earful of healthy-sounding choruses and with as many questions about the artist as we had when this whole thing began. But what can you really make of a man who’ll go to so much trouble to deliver such a vast collection of likeable songs that shift from the profound to the absurd in mere seconds? They must really be in love with something, and, surely, they’re looking for it in these sounds that they’re making.
