English professor and three time U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky is a strong believer in poetry being spoken, not just read. “The medium is the reader’s voice,” he expanded in an interview with BU Today. Stella Rose is a believer of this too, and it emanates from her debut album Eyes of Glass like a mission statement between each line of words and each bar of music. The New York-based singer, poet, and musician sings like she simply needs to spill her words from her mouth.
Take “Faithful”, where she snarls “I’ve become undone loving you” as though it’s both a kiss off and a damning indictment. Soot black guitars darken the track as Rose shrieks into the nighttime void, bringing to mind unravelled and theatrical moments of Chelsea Wolfe. Rose knows the power of a curling consonant. On “Maid For You” she sounds positively lascivious when she unfurls the line “let me clean up after you, babe”, while, over the insistent snare of “Muddled Man”, she decrees “I’m well fed” with a knowing smirk. Even when she’s assembling unrelated words (“Sometimes it can sound really good putting unlikely words next to each other. It creates its own meaning once it’s together”, she has said), she finds interesting ways to play with emphasis and vocal intonation.
Eyes of Glass is a writerly album, which is unsurprising for Rose; in interviews she talks of her bookshelves that are filled with notebooks documenting her life. The album’s lyrics read like both streams-of-consciousness and carefully constructed darts to be aimed at unnamed individuals. But it’s also an explorative and searching album, Rose trying out various outfits to see what fits and what doesn’t. On “Slowdown” she’s siren-like, filling the void aside woozy synths (and evoking Zola Jesus in the process), while on closing track “Angel” she adopts an airier and lighter tone. “Jane” – an ode to the street she grew up on and how individuals change over time – is an inebriated, sepia-toned, and water-stained soul pop number that works as an effective backdrop to Rose’s overcooked posturing. Not everything sticks the landing or makes a strong impression (the jittery and loungey “Clean”, the muddied and overproduced “Pray”), but you have to respect Rose for going for what feels right.
Detailing her writing and recording process in an interview with American Songwriter, one answer about how meaning changes over time rings particularly true when listening through to Eyes of Glass. “It’s kind of beautiful and also a relief that you don’t have to remain in that one place where you initially wrote it,” Rose explains. It’s a productive attitude to have to making art, but also what feels like the main issue with the music here. While the gothic haze of “Faithful” or the delicately menacing prepared piano of “Maid For You” are well matched to their lyrics, it can still feel very apparent that there was a couple of years between the words being written and the studio sessions with Rose and her band.
To its benefit, Eyes of Glass has a rawness to it that certainly helps Rose’s delivery shine (while also showing her range, which takes influence from contemporaries like PJ Harvey and Patti Smith to jazz musicians she grew up listening to, such as Nina Simone and Billie Holiday). Rose sings like these tracks have been pent up inside her for too long, and she’s both exploring the corners of each line and the possibilities of what her voice can do. Sometimes it’s overdone and overwrought, but it’s an album that needed to be said out loud for Rose’s own sake. After all, this is poetry, which needs to be spoken.
