KELLEY STOLTZ
Below the Branches

San Fransiscan Stoltz records everything himself in the secluded shade of his home and as such his music retains a very idiosyncratic and personal slant, like lysergic lullabies sent on the wind and waves so that wherever you are it seems as though you’re listening to a set of sea shanties from Stoltz street. Beach Boys influences are unabashedly everywhere, and beautifully so. ‘Ever Thought Of Coming Back’ is a child’s venture into their grandparents attic and finding an old jewelery box and opening it to have this play accompanying the ballerina, the shimmery rain on a lake melodies capturing a child's awestruck face in it’s simple plea that if some saviour was gonna do something after all this time then now would be a pretty good time to have a shave, spruce up and pick up that walking stick...though opener ‘Wave Goodbye’ sounds more like Mungo Jerry jamming with The Beatles and Stones on a good day, demoing a song for Brian Wilson. While Stoltz’s high-pitched vocals do recall Carl Wilson it isn’t simply a rehash, ‘Little Lords’ watches the morning mist creeping up over the sea towards the beach, Stoltz rubbing morning eyes sure that Bolan and Steve Peregrine Took are sat there...'The Sun Shines Through’ is ‘The Slider’ space walking through the ballrooms of Mars....‘Birdies Singing’ is garage-glam ram-a-lam played on a tropical beach as coconut and mangos fall around your feet with a ‘la la la la’ chorus straight from the Joanna Newsom nursery rhyme songbook. ‘Mystery’ is a locket that hints at what Syd Barrett’s work might have been without the mental anguish and sedative stupor.

Ecstatically and effervescently eccentric, kooky and quite, quite charming, Kelley Stoltz is a celestial crooner purveying psychedelic parlour songs equally perfect on a spacehop round the Pleiades or along San Fran’s Presidio.
_______________________________________________________

-Stu Gibson