Anyone can step into the studio and whip up a debut album; lyrics, music, and a marketing direction are all you need to sell records. To make something that really connects with people takes a lot more effort and a lot of natural, God-given gifts that, even if blessed with them, take a lot of practice to make work for you. Corey Stapleton has these things going in his direction in his debut album Sea Change with The Pretty Pirates, but the lack of urgency in his tone would never leave you thinking he’s under any stress. His swagger is at times a bit much to deal with, but if I had a voice as crisp as his is in the title track of Sea Change, I’d be a little cocky myself.
I got the impression pretty much from the moment I first listened to “Mosaic” and “Western Son” that Corey Stapleton is a guy who doesn’t really care much for the streamlined composing and producing styles that have become a lot more common in pop music over the past fifteen years. There’s an ear for texture and tone in this release that is stunningly physical and sonically intuitive, and whether that’s his influence or that of The Pretty Pirates is irrelevant – it’s making for premium listening in this album like nothing I would have originally anticipated hearing from an untested rookie in folk/rock. He places tremendous value on tonality, and the intimate presentation of the music confirms that.
Stapleton puts up a tenacious attack in “Even Though,” “The Pen,” “My First Rodeo. Not.,” and “New Me,” showing us in no uncertain terms that no matter what the tempo or the stylization of a song happens to be, he’s going to give us the same amount of soul he would any other time. They’re not all hits to me; frankly, I don’t think “The Coin” or “Make This Work” show us anything about his sound that we wouldn’t have already come up with just by listening to “As the Crow Flies” or the superior “Kabul’s Fallen,” but this doesn’t mean the material is subpar in the grander scheme of things. For what this player could produce, they’re coming up short, but next to the fodder for FM replays you’re going to be hearing all spring long, they’re diamonds in the rough.
I had never heard of Corey Stapleton or The Pretty Pirates before they debuted this full-length album, but they don’t act like staying in the American underground forever is anything they even want to consider doing. There’s a drive for the mainstream that is obvious from all angles in Sea Change, but I don’t think that we need to worry about Stapleton giving us his ideals just for the sake of a fatter paycheck. He’s going hard on certain aesthetics in this piece, sometimes to his own demise, and he’s undeniably sounding a lot more confident than most of the greenhorn recording artists dropping buzzed LPs this season do.
Troy Johnstone