It shouldn’t have taken me this long to hear Stem Champ for the first time. I’m glad I added New Feeling to the RSS reader (which I found thanks to Liz Pelly’s essential book on Spotify) — this is a band that’s exactly in my sweet spot: indie, fuzzy, a bit slacker-y, with memorable melodies, a sense of fun and a real DIY vibe.
Their debut album Prairie Skies Forever was released on November of last year, and I missed the memo. Better late than never: this is a great record.
Anyone who has grown up in a rural place knows the feelings on this record: nostalgia for old friends that have moved on, comfortable routines and small changes that seem large in context. Alemu is the friend from school that commits to the hometown, and welcomes those old friends with open arms and a pint.
Stem Champ are from Edmonton, and though they’re a full band, it’s fully the project of singer and songwriter Sare Alemu, whose slack and playful vocal style is full of earnestness and charm. Plenty of these lyrics sound stream-of-consciousness or even ad-libbed, with a delivery that sounds off-the cuff, speak-singing/yelling her way through most of the lyrics with a charismatic nonchalance or an off-kilter Crooked Rain, Crooked-Rain era Stephen Malkmus wobble.
Here’s the description of the record from Stem Champ’s Bandcamp page:
There are a lot of reasons why people chose to leave this city. The winters are long and cold. The summers are hot and smoky. The politicians are spineless and violent. But there is something powerful in choosing to stay. Home isn’t just a place but it’s the people in it and the sidewalks we frequent and the patterns clouds draw in the sky. And the prairie skies are truly something else.
It’s bang on. The lyrics are about staying put while others move on, about simple pleasures and familiar places and routines:
I always find myself back here
Treaty six – Mill Creek, Bonnie Doon
The place of my first breaths, first steps
Prairie skies forever
It’s a warm, nostalgic and hopeful record. Alemu is home in Edmonton, even though close friends have moved on. Album closer “This Time Next Year” ends with a beautiful sing-along section to acknowledge the moment when good friends are about to scatter to their new lives: “This time next year we won’t miss what we’re missing.”
I don’t often get wistful about the place I grew up. I don’t go back much and when I do there are a lot of people I hope I don’t run into. This record by Stem Champ makes me want to go home again.
Further reading
New Feeling review
The Gateway (U of A) profile
