Stone Lucy

Propelled by Adam Parker’s immensely-likable vocals, Stone Lucy chases a sister muse of Tool and Soundgarden, with a youthful verve and a proggish swagger. Rather than flaunt simple, catchy pop song structure, Stone Lucy opts for dynamically arranged and challenging song structure with adventurous twists and turns. The overall result is some kick ass new rock out of Richmond, VA. Take “Pali Soma,” for example. It opens with a chugging, rhythmic guitar line, fat rumbling bass and drums before angling into a gently insistent vocal melody. Two minutes in and the song could be finished, but instead it takes a hard left into a bridge fraught with tension; everything’s stripped out of the mix except kick-ass low-end drum fills, shimmering, freestyling guitar and earnest, urgent layered and echoing vocals. This is where less-slick bands would blow it, but Stone Lucy creates a tension that builds, a point-counterpoint between drums and guitar, vocals keeping up with the pace, swirling and soaring until finally resolving into repeating loops of “Never came home, never came home, never came home…” At full volume through a headset, “Pali Soma” would leave the uninitiated curled into a fetal ball. “Expecting Gills” and “Manakin” are equally dynamic and compelling. “Birthmark” is a stand-out with call-and-response vocals and delicious guitars that veer from Gilmore-esque to assaultive. You don’t expect indie rock as carefully arranged as this, at least not anything this balls-out aggressive. Adam Parker, Will Decher (guitars) and Garrett Lyon (bass) could have stopped working on these songs a lot sooner and they’d still be great songs. The great thing is, each of these tracks would hold up if Stone Lucy were to take them into a low-key, pared-down acoustic format. That’s the sign of a good rock song — maybe some day there’ll be a bonus “unplugged” Stone Lucy release. One more note on this great band — lyrically, the songs are not for the faint of heart. With no exceptions Stone Lucy is topically heavy, threads of a tragic tapestry wrenched from some hinted-at personal catastrophe and woven into a sonic assault. Ghosts have a cold, dead hand in some of what’s going on just below the surface, so be ready to get emotionally engaged while they rock you off your chair. (http://www.stonelucy.com) (Review date: Sept 24 2007, Lexi Kahn)