Slacker rock asks you to believe that the album pumping through your speakers was born from the penchant of a few college buds for Marlboro Reds, shotgunning beers, and jamming out on their second-hand guitars until a song comes together. Bueno, the newest album from Austin six-piece Stalefish has the bones of a garage session with the musical depth and style of a whole lot more.
Stalefish, who formed in 2023, prove on Bueno that there’s a magic in collaboration that creates diverse dimensions while keeping the work cohesive. Even with three songwriters, each of the eleven songs speak to attraction, unrest, and moving along in ways that intertwine and create a thematically connected body of work. As for the instrumentation, Stalefish sticks the landing on the very first try with layers of dynamic sound ranging from jangly and hazy to powerfully moody.
The opening track, “PA Toll Tag”, is uncomplicated and blissful; confusion and anticipation towards a certain someone culminates in the wonderfully straight-forward hook, “I’ve got a Pennsylvania toll tag / I’d like to take you for a drive”. What makes this album impressive is how the backing tracks eke so much sentiment out of the relatively narrative songwriting. Everytime I relistened to a song, I noticed a new layer in the mix that had my subconscious dancing along. “PA Toll Tag” takes a running start with the chug of a rhythm guitar, but its initial power is brightened up by harmonic, playful keyboard line until the chilled-out verse kicks in. The fuzz is cranked up just enough to meld all of the sounds together. Despite their exterior as a typical indie slacker rock band, Stalefish is ingenious on this album.
One standout is their first single, “Superstar”. It harkens seriously to the indie darlings of rock with a hazy, summer-tinged lead guitar like Momma or Snail Mail’s Lush, speak-sung vocals that resound with feeling like Slaughter Beach, Dog, and something entirely new that builds upon their evident musical influences. Stalefish evades the trap of indie rock band redundancy by letting their musicians rip on a song that could just as easily be supported by an acoustic guitar. The drumming on “Superstar” is incredibly strong, and it keeps a lyrically heavier song from becoming too heavy to have a good time with. The guitar is a little bit unpredictable, a little bit ambient, and a little bit 80s. Stalefish’s motto seems to be “inspiration, not imitation” as they do justice to a foundation of iconic musicians.
Their most recent single, “Hypnotized”, is a standout on the album as well as in and of itself. It takes cues from blues rock yet subverts expectations at every turn, and you can hear the sheer fun that the band was having as every bit of production, instrumentation, and songwriting pulls its own creative wait. “Hypnotized” bounces off the walls and then suddenly reigns it in for a moment of sparse percussion, luring you in just for it to bounce off the walls again.
The vocals on Bueno resoundingly hold their own on top of the complex songwriting. In “Hypnotized”, the vocals are distorted up and down in swirls that make the listener themself feel like they’re as hypnotized as the narrator is. Even without the distortion, he goes from Texas blue vocals into an easy, fun falsetto multiple times throughout the sub-four minute song, and it really grips the listener into meeting the band in the wacky place where they’re at.
Other standouts include “Better Company” for its true-to-form, catchy slacker rock melodics and candid lyrics, “Everything’s Embarrassing” for its gorgeous soundscapes (featuring brass!) and bittersweet feel, and “So Far Away” for the way it plays with tempo and rhythm until you just can’t help but get on your feel and jam out.
Stalefish will be playing an album release show tonight at Hole in the Wall ahead of Bueno’s release on October 9th. If you’ve always wanted to catch a future headliner while they were still local, this could very well be your chance! Whether or not you’re a certified Pavement-listening slacker, there’s enough fun, honesty, and skill happening on this album for anybody to enjoy.