Stubai’s first LP, released just a couple of months after their brilliant debut E.P, Voyager, is here (at last), and not a moment too soon. It’s a cracking, literate, thoughtful record which itemises the push and pull of connection, the coiled, stomach-gnawing ache of longing, and the human tendency to oscillate between feeling small and feeling deeply, personally overwhelmed. Through these weeds Stubai’s songwriter, Matt T, tramps a path towards clarity. And you can too.
When I obsessed over Stubai’s last EP, I fixated on the sense of agitation and doubt evident in songs like ‘Broken Teeth’ and ‘Do You Miss Me’. I expected more of the same; but the splendid We Were Here (a questing, intelligent LP) radically extends the band’s range towards a growing comfort with the absence of answers to the big questions, and – eventually – a pure expression of acceptance and appreciation.
If you bought Voyager you know the first three songs already. ‘Another Way’, ‘Broken Teeth’, and ‘Voyager (ad astra)’ get us started. They’re great songs. ‘Another Way’ is beautiful, melodic and profound – a celebration of the mysteries of life which acknowledges that “the only thing that stays the same is change in everything”.
‘Broken Teeth’, with its gnarlier, late Sonic Youth edge, delivers a parade of unchecked vulnerability. The lyrics – “ I want you to notice something / I want you to be in love with me” – capturing a conflict between the need for validation and the fear of rejection.
‘Voyager (ad astra)’, with its Ash-esque pop-punk urgency, is terrific: “In peace as friends we send a sign across the universe / To transcend a fate we only brought upon ourselves.” That tension is something Stubai do so well – observing the distance between the fizzy, skin-itch tang of longing and the wide-open space that separates us from the thing we want.
Familiar tracks dispensed with, We Were Here immediately takes strides forwards. On the exceptional ‘Hold Fast’, Matt dials the angst back and slows the pace, gliding into less choppy introspective territory. Stripped to just guitar and voice, it delivers a warm and introverted reflection on resilience: “Hold fast to hope and self-belief / Float past the fear, the angst, the dread.” I’m reminded of one of Evan Dando’s fragile, emotionally open, quiet moments. It’s a real, uplifting beauty. “I had too much to think last night / I felt a fear I couldn’t fight / Then realised I didn’t have to try”.
Both ‘Where the Fishes Sleep’ and ‘Don’t Go Away’ are tremendously moving, finding further space in quiet arrangements and washes of sound. The former reframes the place where fishes sleep from Mafioso threat to a tranquil midnight canvas. “I could steal away from underneath these sheets”, Matt reflects, “through dark and quiet streets / Gently close the door / Slip off to the shore / To where the fishes sleep”. Confidential and intimate, recalling the affecting, open-vowel melodies of Ride, the song is blissful. “Is this a dream from which I’ll awake / or a salve to soothe the ache / that pulls like a riptide”, Matt asks. The sea has rarely sounded so appealing.
‘Don’t Go Away’ – so perfectly sequenced it could almost be a coda – is equally lovely. Not for the first time Matt reflects on abandonment, making his understated yet aching plea – “Now I’m not saying that I want to stay / But another part of me is begging / Don’t go away” – but the song is surefooted and settled; sad but accepting. In this context, ‘Do You Miss Me?’ (the other track from Voyager) restates its anxious energy (“You’re far away and I’m glad you’re free / But I need to know … do you miss me”) but it is better anchored here.
Listening, I reflect that the arrangements on this record (uniformly delightful) share a characteristic baked into a lot of the best alternative rock records which originate, as this does, from Australia – Robert Forster’s ‘striped sunlight sound’, that duality of melancholy and sun-kissed warmth. Light, shade, emotional depth all at once.
Nowhere is this more evident than on the LP’s incredible final track, ‘The Golden Hour’, which celebrates exactly that dappled light. “There’s a glow across the landscape / Silver clouds drift past the sun’s face”, Matt sings, delivering a moment of pure, transformative calm, as the song’s blissy, trembling guitars let out their peaceful exhale.
‘The Golden Hour’ is perfect. It’s not a triumphant conclusion – rather a quiet moment of grace. Contentment comes from appreciating the world as it is, not by trying to control it. We need not banish the moments of loneliness or doubt, but we can move radically towards happiness by learning to hold these big, difficult questions without needing to solve them.
So the song fades as the sun sets, dissolving until all that is left is the world as it’s always been; the song of nature – the last minutes floating off into a field recording of birds and insects, recorded in Wombeyan, New South Wales. I sit stunned for a minute or two, afterwards.
We Were Here is brilliant; its bravura second side deftly resolving the troubling challenges of love, connection, emotional vulnerability and, of course, survival. A record that ebbs and flows, embraces life, and slips away at last into a still night.
Hold it close.
Written by Jonathan Shipley
