FEATURE:
Spotlight
Been Stellar
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I did say I was going to move away…
PHOTO CREDIT: Naz Kawakami/Press
from female artists exclusively for Spotlight. I will return soon but, in an effort to feature more groups, I wanted to include the incredible Been Stellar. The New York band have been in my radar before, but I have not yet included them. I shall come to their eponymous E.P. soon, as it is a phenomenal release. I would urge everyone to check them out. I want to bring in a few interviews from this year. They are a wonderful group who should be shown a lot of support and love. DIY spoke to the incredible Been Stellar back in June:
“Think of guitar bands from New York and still, 21 years after their debut album was released, your mind will likely jump straight to The Strokes. Within the city’s musical history books, Julian Casablancas and co’s shadow looms large, and it’s a burden that Bushwick’s Been Stellar are all too aware of - yet they’re shrugging it off brilliantly with a refined new sound and a strong sense of confidence.
“Being in a band in New York isn’t cool anymore,” explains singer Sam Slocum nonchalantly from one side of a table in central London pub Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (“We’re getting a real Charles Dickens experience!” they joke). “If someone asks me what I do, I won’t tell them I’m in a band.” To most people, that might sound like there’s a shame attached to the group’s endeavours but, the frontman says, it’s quite the contrary.
“That’s really liberating,” he suggests. “It’s hilarious to be a band [in NYC], but it’s just the format we enjoy making music in,” agrees guitarist Skyler St. Marx. “Coming over [to the UK] and seeing how much people care about guitar bands makes us realise that New York doesn’t have that same industry infrastructure.”
Been Stellar began life when Sam and Skyler started playing together in high school in Michigan. When they moved to New York for university, the band slowly evolved into the five-piece we speak to today, completed by guitarist Nando Dale, drummer Laila Wayans and bassist Nico Brunstein. Having first started gaining attention locally around four years ago, their early sound might have been a little more indebted to those famous forefathers but, now, they’re moving forward and coming into their own. You certainly won’t find them clinging onto the city’s past, “wearing leather jackets and hanging out in Tompkins Square Park”, as Skyler laughs.
The quintet’s sonic evolution can be heard on ‘Kids 1995’ - their latest single (and first for label So Young) which arrived in April as a rush of noisy shoegaze and the commanding hook of, “So when the time is right / You just have to take it / Jesus Christ, it’s like time is naked.” First written a few years ago, the song has since morphed to fit the band’s current vision. “The pandemic gave us time to reflect and rethink how we want to be perceived,” Nico explains. “It felt like what we were making [before] wasn’t being honest to what we felt or how we wanted to sound.”
Although their latest release nods to Kids, the Larry Clark-directed, Harmony Korine-written movie that follows a group of lawless teens around NYC, it’s less about the film itself, instead tying into a new mood of honesty. “I wrote it after I saw the movie for the first time about three years ago,” Sam shares. “I used it as kind of a jumping-off point for these reflections on my life and internal struggles, and topics like loss of innocence.”
Despite a film being the launchpad for the single, the band say movies aren’t really a typical source of inspiration for their music. “I prefer to write about my own experiences and things I see around me,” their frontman says, while Skyler adds that they do see themselves as “writing the soundtrack for a movie that doesn’t exist yet”. “Nando has some great descriptions,” he adds, referring to the imagined scenes they’re trying to accompany. The whole band looks at their other guitarist expectantly, as he digs one up from his memory. “One was meerkats staring into the setting sun,” he grins as laughter rings around him”.
Just before getting to NME’s take on the Been Stellar E.P., there is something else I want to include. It is one of the best E.P.s of this year I think. It will be exciting to think and imagine whether we will get an album from the New York group next year. DORK featured the tremendous Been Stellar last month:
“While they tread that fine journey, the New York five-piece continue to discover their own sound – something they initially found difficult while stepping out of The Strokes’ shadow and finding their own identity, but it doesn’t haunt them any longer. “Personally, I don’t think we sound much like them,” Skyler shrugs. “We get that a lot more here than in the US, and it is easy to contextualise us in that way, but it’s not something we’re consciously replicating in any way at this point.” Instead, he points to more niche, albeit still extremely successful influences: “Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Ride… we like noisy and melodic music. That’s what interests us all. It’s a difficult thing to do – some people do noisy and very harsh stuff well, and some people do pop music well, but it’s a delicate balance trying to merge the two.”
Considering their signing to UK indie label So Young, it makes sense that the band also appreciate many current artists: “Lime Garden, VLURE, Humour, Gently Tender… they really are tastemakers,” Laila nods. Artists like these all embody something that Been Stellar try to take on board; using your current surroundings to define your path forward.
PHOTO CREDIT: Holly Whitaker
“We like music that can only exist in one place,” Skyler clarifies. “If you’re not fully letting your environment influence your songwriting, you’re going to be making compromises. There’s a lot of artifice and dishonesty in that behaviour.” He continues: “It’s one thing to see a band and think, ‘they sound like x or y’, but it’s another thing to realise they’re saying something pertinent to the present day; that’s what is pushing music forward.”
Enabling this progression within their notorious neck of the woods has been a consideration always on his mind, too. “There’s a lot of give and take while doing that in New York – you get to have the New York identity, which is interesting in its own way, but you need to keep contributing to that identity if you’re also going to be taking from it. That’s something we take really seriously; we want to add to the lineage.”
Aside from all this talk, the band have been able to form a solid release to tee up their ambitions – the ‘Been Stellar’ EP reveals their first steps towards defining their post-pandemic goals. “It’s a really good mission statement for what we are going to become,” St. Marx summarises. “It’s a very diverse EP. There are a lot of different sounds and directions, but each song contains an element that we want to blend into one on the album. The directness of ‘Manhattan Youth’ combined with the boldness of closing track ‘Ohm’ is what we envision us reaching for next.” Speaking of, the aforementioned album is in the works as we speak. “We have a load of shades of blue, and a load of shades of red; but we want the album to be purple. A big bunch of purple,” he grins. “That sounded better in my head”.
Go and check out the Been Stellar E.P. if you have not done so already. It is a fantastic work. A very distinct and promising band, I am keeping my eyes on Been Stellar to see where they head. This is what NME had to say about a fascinating E.P. that everyone needs to listen to and embrace:
“The band’s self-titled debut EP often feels an enchanting love letter to their adopted stomping ground, but on their own terms. Flickering brilliantly between shoegaze and dream-pop, its gripping closer ‘Ohm’ packs a skyscraping tonal quality as Sam Slocum’s piercing vocal arrives: “Floating through Avenues / Just a place to be, be a part of / Alone again with you.” Come the end of the five-minute anthem, you’re thrown into poetic snapshots of a post-lockdown city from the “line snaking around Katz’s Deli’‘ to “soda cans sweating in the August heat.”
Their nuanced portrait of the city doesn’t overlook its darker side. Opening with punchy riffs, ‘Manhattan Youth’ takes a swipe at rose-tinted views of their home, a place that can be as gruesome and heartbreaking as it is magical. Slocum shreds out his vocal about how the social system can easily distort its youth: “He takes his time / And holding out his hand waiting for a guide / His street is cold / His mothers old / Pace past the garbage and repeat.”
Their tonal palette is as thrilling as their lyrical takes. The EP ebbs and flows between spiky grunge and melody drenched guitars. The cinematic ‘Kids 1995’ is a standout moment that hits upon the kind of soul-striking perfection most bands could spend a lifetime chasing.
Though they’ve managed to carve their own angle, the mystique and raw sense of youth that has so often defined the greats of NYC’s guitar greats cuts through the surface at all times here. In capturing this, it’s a release that proclaims them as one of their city’s brightest new hopes”.
One of the great bands coming through, Been Stellar have many years ahead of them. Their self-titled E.P. is exceptional. I only discovered them earlier in the year, but I was instantly impressed by Been Stellar. Go and follow them on social media and chart their progress. Though some might not know about them at the moment, this will all change. They are definitely…
ONE of the bands of the moment.
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