by Krishan Meepe (@krishanye)
Oddity has always piqued my curiosity. Who is the madman behind this? Are they completely bonkers or maybe they’re the only sane one in an upside-down world? Whatever the answer is, it’s catchy and full of screaming guitars.
Stinkin Donuts aka Sean Harper, hails from Vancouver, Canada and has been around the block long enough to know how to write, record, and mix this whole album himself, but knowing that does little to contextualize much of anything. “No genre is my new favorite genre,” reads his bio, along with some stuff about pendulum’s swinging and heat domes. I’d probably give this the obscenely vague label, “outsider music,” even though it’s definitely “insider” enough that the song structures all make sense and the melodies know how to stay in your head. Stinkin Donuts expertly toes this line between here and there. Sardonic enough that it must be about someone they don’t know, but earnest enough that it’s definitely personal. Too weird sounding to be serious, but poignant enough that it has to be. “A guitar never sounded so sweet,” he sings on “Blind Joe Death” – an ode to American fingerstyle guitarist John Fahey, who died twenty years ago.
The guitars on “I’m Sick” will satisfy anyone who loves that fuzzed out screaming sound you might find on a Dinosaur Jr. record, but with more of Kurt Cobain’s sarcastic wit. This record wouldn’t be out of place in a bizzarro 90’s grunge era, but moments like “Down The Toilet Bowl To Hell” seem so relevant. Then again, sometimes Nirvana still seems relevant too. The way Harper’s voice goes from laidback to snarled on “Bad Trip” is a pretty impressive trick, saying a lot with nothing more than inflection. The devil is in the details here for sure, the nuance in the singing, the band name, the textural guitars that build things to a boiling point, or solos that start off sounding heroic before falling over from the weight of irony, giggling. Alongside some nice acoustic moments and a few hellish flutes (maybe recorders?), Heavy Feathers is a charming collection of sounds that will take you to some strange places, but not without checking in to see if you’re okay first. As he says, “Don’t forget to look at the stars.”