A swing to alternative rock, ‘stepdream’ within its ramshackle compositions and mostly dynamic production fulfill a refinement that gives way to Quannnic’s tense delivery, yet the overall execution is left to be desired.
quannnic paints their quiet yet dour downpours within big, spacious frequencies. The juxtaposition between brief phrases of emo wallowing and bracketed noise peers through on ‘Kenopsia’, where quannnic pushes those characteristics at the forefront, leading to ‘Kenopsia’ being a haphazard project where the lo-fi roughness and melodic rigidity hurts the emotive punch and the vocal expression that Quannnic was trying to render to that project. Perhaps, with a better grasp of the production sounding more polished and the compositions providing more striking progressions, quannnic could succeed in creating that juxtaposition.
A year after that debut, ‘Stepdream’, for the most part, shifts quannnic’s sonic palette into alternative rock with slips of grunge, noise rock, and shoegaze onto the mix that provides a lot more weight on how quannnic lends their vocals this time around, with enough firepower that shows quannnic’s ability to flit across this burgeoning organic instrumentation. ‘Sheets’ and ‘How to Hold a Knife’ are peppered with slippery strumming and percussive touches, creating a sense of punch on every corner, especially with the ravishing guitar tone weaving in and out on the bridge of ‘Sheets’. The walls of distorted feedback climb through ‘South’ and ‘Family Means’ which puts up weight for those tracks’ mid-tempo pace as quannnic swells up their volume on their delivery and erupts their emotive expressions later on. That volume does break apart on ‘Jophiel’, where that noisy wall of sound from the groveling riffs and alternative metal breakdowns provides the darkest backdrop of the entire album. Yet there are mellow cuts that do temper down that ominous edge, from ‘Bryn Mawr’ with the dilapidated vocals and acoustic strumming that is then accompanied further with the ethereal feedback that closes the track, ‘Rummage’ with Orbiting Human Circus providing additional vocals and singing saw as the straightforward melodies and composed mixing allow quannnic’s presence to be positioned center stage, and the closer ‘How Much Time to Quit’ with the female backing vocals and quaint strumming is a quilt for the hushed melodies that quannnic is bringing to the table.
The poetry that quannnic is presenting still pulls them into this sensible emo wallowing where there is still dimness at the core, but it’s now framed in quannnic’s own angst towards the relationship that is burdened with loneliness, where the memories only ended up being caustic for quannnic. And as much as there is one moment on the album where quannnic feels gnashing anger on ‘Jophiel’, for the most part, the emotions they’re feeling here are disconnection and numbness due to the relationship being vaguely described as overall empty. And due to that emptiness, the sense of care towards that somebody will then dissipate as quannnic replaces that with self-inflected hurt that’s just going to disappoint them and that person in question. Wherein the last resort to resolve this dead air is just to quit so that quannnic and the person they’re with would just stay away from each other for the better.
As much as there are sonic experimentation quannnic tries here that do brush away some of the underlying issues that make ‘Kenopsia’ quite a mess, there is a new set of problems that simultaneously fumble those polished ideas. Melodic-wise, while quannnic understands their compositional strengths where they stuff up the bombast on the hooks given their usual spareness on the writing, the execution of that comes up short where it just comes off under tuned and the lack of interesting progressions hurts it even more. The shaggy production also does not help here either, a lot of compressed mixing that might provide variance on the dynamics, but it just does not allow the instruments and vocals to pop fairly well as they just end up getting swamped out. And there is also the alternative rock swerve that quannnic is approaching here that may have tilted towards shoegaze and noise rock, but they’re rather underutilized as the repetitive instrumental textures start hampering down a style that quannnic might do well here, but just ends up milk toast as a result.
‘Stepdream’, for the most part, is an improvement towards every element that makes ‘Kenopsia’ a headache to go back to, allowing quannnic’s stark delivery to strike through as they flit across this brand of fickle alternative rock. Yet, every improvement also has its own dicey downside where the compression just blocks out the tunes on a couple of songs, melodies that are just painfully underwhelming, and an approach to alternative rock that doesn’t have enough refreshing ideas to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. For a project surrounding that numbed disconnection on a relationship, the haphazard issues and unexciting alternative rock approach on ‘Stepdream’ oddly create that distanced shrug, where quannnic might step into the right direction, but is sidestepped with melodies and production choices that only fumbles more than it really connects.
Favorite Tracks: ‘South’, ‘Sheets’, ‘Family Means’, ‘Rummage (feat. Orbiting Human Circus)’, ‘How Much Time to Quit’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Comatose’