Kelley Stoltz is from Detroit, but up to now, you’d have been hard pressed to find evidence of any Motor City osmosis effect. His influences were Anglo-philic – Beatles, Beach Boys, Kinks and the like — clever types hanging around in cafes, mildly disappointed in love and not at all prone to booty shaking. That’s changed with Que Aura, by my count his ninth, where funk, soul and even disco make modest, unflashy cameos in amongst the fuzz and jangle. It’s a good move, nowhere near as awkward as you might expect, one that decocts the psychedelic shimmer from both the American Bandstand and Soul Train sides of the equation and gives his luminous pop songs a bewitching transcendental sheen.
You hear it first three cuts into the album in “Get Over” with its simmering, quiet storm bass line and echo-shrouded vocals, its vintage keys and narcotic syncopations. It bubbles and undulates in an easy going way, but also opens out into day-glo colored trippiness and might remind you a little bit of the psych-soul classic “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and the Shondells. “Looking for a Spark” likewise pits a driving R&B flavored bass and disco high-hat shush and pop against a soaring pop melody, splinted into Beach-Boys-ish counterparts; it crests in a lush, lavish interval of synthesizer flourishes straight out of 1970s disco. And “Empty Kicks,” right at the end, throws caution to the wind, bringing in the kind of twitchy, trebly guitars last heard from Chic (though again, there’s a big, romantic pop song in there, too).
The remarkable thing about Kelley Stoltz up to now has been how seamlessly he absorbs his influences, finds their essences and out of that irreducable core makes songs that are entirely fresh and new. He’s one of the best songwriting craftsmen working today, and the test is that while almost all of his songs feel familiar the first time you hear them, it is very, very difficult to pinpoint exactly what they remind you of. Adding another set of sounds to the pot is like discovering another color — and while much has remained the same about Stoltz’s aesthetic, it makes all the old colors look subtly different.
