This week's feature: Katie Stelmanis

Katie Stelmanis, Join Us (Blocks)

WHO

One-time punk rocker going it alone.

DISCOGRAPHY

Join Us (Blocks, 2008)

IN A NUTSHELL

Join Us is very, very weird and very, very good.

THE STORY

Writing about music is hard -- and more than a little pointless -- at the best of times (hence this site's subheader), but it's artists like Katie Stelmanis who make it especially difficult. Case in point: listen to "In My Favour", the opening track from her debut, Join Us. Now try to describe it. Better yet, try to describe it without invoking one or two vaguely similar artists (that is, Kate Bush or Nico).

You could certainly mention those two, and most people writing about Join Us have chosen to do so (and I count myself among that number, since I lack the kind of musical vocabulary necessary to break down what's happening here). But it still seems like you're doing Stelmanis a huge disservice when you do. After all, on that track -- not to mention the other nine that follow it -- she's off doing something that's uniquely her own, and she's doing it in a way that's not only creepy and cold and scary, but also totally riveting and accessible.

That last part is relative, of course. You're not going to hear Stelmanis on the airwaves outside of certain blocks of college radio programming any time soon. But still, there aren't many artists who could include a wall of dissonnant noise right in the middle of their album, and and then keep going right into the next track as if nothing had happened (as happens here with the closing thirty seconds of "You'll Fall"). Then again, you're also not likely to ever hear as chilling a rendition of "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman" as Stelmanis closes out her album with.

It all goes together to create an album that doesn't really sound like anything else. I'm sure a lot of people will listen to Join Us and be immediately turned off by its sonic harshness or by Stelmanis' teutonically cold vocals. But at the same time, if you give it a chance and you're in the mood to hear something totally unique, Join Us should be exactly what you're looking for.


Want to win Join Us? Thanks to Blocks, i(heart)music has a copy to give away. To enter to win, just e-mail me your name and address, and I'll pick a winner randomly!