Spiral Stairs - The Real Feel reviews
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| Nme |
 A lot can happen to a musician in five years. Often they’ll return ploughing a different musical furrow. Or, if they’re Spiral Stairs, they’ll have simply changed their name. Not that we’re complaining – former (and soon to be again, come the reunion) [a]Pavement[/b] guitarist Scott Kannberg has dropped his Preston Of School Industry moniker, but the ramshackle guitars are still present, especially on opener ‘True Love’, while his shaky voice still tells us tales of relationship trauma. He sometimes takes the long road to Weirdsville, as on the sublime ‘Subiaco Shuffle’, which sounds like a distant cousin of his old band. No surprises here, but it’s hard to fault Kannberg’s strongest solo album yet....full text |
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| Gloriousnoise |
he worry for me is that the Pavement reunion will all but overshadow the new Spiral Stairs album, The Real Feel. Hopefully, the opposite will be true; all of the salvo might very well rekindle an interest in this, Spiral Stairs’ first proper solo album, and give it some much-deserved attention.
Call it the divorce album, an event that can be both a traumatic experience as well as an intensely creative one. I’m sure Scott Kannberg’s had his share of long nights conceiving this effort, but he should take solace in knowing that it’s produced such a rewarding record of both lyrical intimacy and musical therapy...full text |
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| Dustedmagazine |
If there’s an auteur theory of Pavement – “Steve Malkmus was the visionary force behind the band” – both his and Scott Kannberg’s solo albums go a long way towards disproving that idea. It’s pretty obvious that what made the band great was the interaction between the members. And as that started to fray sometime around Brighten the Corners, the music became less interesting. By that time, it was obvious which songs were Malkmus songs and which ones were Kannberg songs, each with little interference from the other or the other members, not just because their styles are wildly different, but also because the last two Pavement albums as a whole are less fun. Unless a group’s lead singer is an outright genius – a sobriquet neither Malkmus nor Kannberg can lay claim to – a band’s going to be its most fun when all the members are shaping a song or an album. As Pavement started to fall apart, the fun part of Pavement, i.e., the collaborative aspect, started to drop off, and the last two albums gradating into both Malkmus and Kannberg’s solo careers become more and more of a slog to get through.
If the central conceit then is that in the absence of an outright musical prodigy, collaboration is what creates music that’s fun and interesting, it says a lot about Kannberg’s third post-Pavement album The Real Feel, and the first where he’s felt comfortable using his old nickname Spiral Stairs. Previously, Kannberg had released two albums and an EP as The Preston School of Industry, a reference to an old Pavement one-off song they did on VPRO, a Dutch TV station. PSOI seemed to be a more collaborative project. While it was undoubtedly Kannberg’s post-Pavement vehicle, that he didn’t use his own name was telling. This was somewhat of a nod back to Pavement, where he and Malkmus started off eschewing their real names (crediting themselves as SM and Spiral Stairs) partly as homage to bands like The Fall, partly to create mystique, and partly as a middle finger to easy commercialization. However, PSOI also seemed to be more of a group effort. While there are some PSOI members playing on The Real Feel, the fact that Kannberg is recording and performing under his own nickname means that, like Malkmus (though to a lesser degree since he isn’t “Scott Kannberg”), he is taking ownership of his music and his sound....full text |
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