Scream from New York, NY, the first album by Been Stellar, is a remarkably brutal debut –
bruised and volatile, it captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where
tenderness is a finite resource burned up by the machinery of the city and human connection is
a luxury product. Leaving behind the driving shoegaze of their early recordings, the NYC-based
five-piece tap into the disaffected sound and spirit of New York luminaries like Sonic Youth and
Interpol, as well as the nihilistic, yearning cool of Iceage and Bends-era Radiohead, striking
upon a sound that’s fearsome, buffeting and beautiful at the same time – a tidal wave as viewed
from underneath.
As its wry title implies, Scream from New York, NY, is a record about what happens when
language fails – between friends, partners, a city and its citizens – and the primal scream you
might let out when words just don’t work anymore. Guitarist Skyler Knapp, vocalist Sam Slocum,
Brazilian-born guitarist Nando Dale, bass player Nico Brunstein and drummer Laila Wayans met
as undergrads at NYU, bonding over a shared sense of humor and forming a motley crew
based more on emotional compatibility than any rigid ideas of shared artistic sensibility. Finding
that last vestiges of the city’s famed 2000s and 2010s DIY underground had been ground down
to nothing, the band put on their own shows, renting spaces and collaborating with friends to
build the world they wanted to inhabit.
Determined to break new sonic ground, the band embarked on a relentless practice schedule,
even renting scrappy studios on days off during tours with Fontaines DC and Shame. After
befriending him at SXSW, the band tapped producer Dan Carey (black midi, Wet Leg) to help
coalesce the disparate elements of their sound that had been percolating: forceful, driving
physicality; pop classicism; gnarled beauty; and a rich emotional core. The resulting 10-song
album announces Been Stellar as gimlet-eyed chroniclers of contemporary youth, staring
through noise and confusion into the dark heart of modern life. These songs embody the spirit of
a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis – an irony befitting the album’s tone:
Been Stellar’s preternatural ability to capture the disconnection that haunts New York with
photorealist detail might just be the thing that vaults them into its pantheon.
