Detroit Rocker Stef Chura Returns

Stef Chura has a prediction: “There’s gonna be a ska revival.” 

She’s earned some authority on comebacks – this month’s Dancing Alone on the Concrete marks her first album in seven years. 

“I’m not gonna start it, but I feel like somebody will,” the Detroit songwriter clarifies. She will not be joining the coming revival – “never, ever” – even though she begrudgingly admits that the genre held a special place in her coming of age, thanks to hometown group Gangster Fun and Christian collective the O.C. Supertones. “If I hear the songs I used to like, I’m excited about them,” she says, though when it comes to recent ska releases, “I don’t know how much new I can incorporate.”

Chura was into all of the cool stuff too – the kinds of bands you’d expect to have influenced Dancing Alone of the Concrete’s Nineties-laced, layered guitar sounds and punchily poetic lyrics. Bikini Kill and the Breeders, Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith: “All the kind of stuff that makes you want to write,” she says.  

The new album draws from a stop on memory lane significantly closer to the present, but still a couple moves, a divorce, and a child ago. “It’s been very transient for me, but I still am writing. I still am sitting on songs,” she says, hinting that fans might not have to wait quite as long for a follow-up to this release. In the meantime, Chura’s still pondering the past preserved in these nine tracks. 

“The more people ask me about the record, it deepens my own thoughts on what really happened while I was writing it,” the songwriter says. By her estimation, 80% of the record was written during a two-year pandemic-era stint in New Orleans. There, the dynamic vocalist stumbled through an open relationship that informed much of the album’s lyricism, made use of her brother’s baby grand to experiment with writing on the piano, and strayed from her house-show roots playing acoustic guitar by the river with Americana songstress Esther Rose. “I had a lot of free time to play and to feel my little feelings,” she explains. 

From the garage drums and infectious melody of “Leadweight” through the grungy vocal treatments and distorted chords of “Be My Hound,” Dancing Alone on the Concrete follows in the garage-pop footsteps of 2019’s Will Toledo-produced Midnight. Chura’s quiet-loud, escalating songwriting structures and guitar-savvy compositions are consistent no matter the time jump. Twinkling keys, peekaboo riffs, and a playful dash of new instrumentation expand on her rock palette, with help from producer Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo and engineers/session musicians David Barbe (Sugar) and Andy LeMaster (Now It’s Overhead). 

“I remember I was sitting in the car with Andy LeMaster, and we were working on this album, and we were thinking of songs we liked,” Chura recalls, pointing to “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper and Edie Brickell’s “Circle” as tracks that became emotional touchpoints, even as the songs took on a more Liz Phair-like quality. Working in Athens, Georgia’s Chase Park Transduction studio, the group invited R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills to play on “Danny,” and Neutral Milk Hotel’s Scott Spillane and Olivia Tremor Control’s John Fernandes to contribute to various tracks as well. 

“Lovesick,” a ballad bespoke for a divey piano bar with desires and sincere alto tones reminiscent of Lilith Fair songwriters, draws from those days transposing songs between piano and guitar. “Thunder and Lightning” buzzes with a crackling synth line and dance floor drum beat, turned dissonantly psychedelic by reverb-laden background vocals. Horns, a first for Chura, on “Danny” and “Heavy Hitter” might be the only trace we’ll see of that long-ago ska infatuation. 

“After everything was done, I drove around with [the album], for honestly, a really long time,” she says. On the road with Dinosaur Jr., the Midwestern songstress is bringing Dancing Alone on the Concrete’s Athens-influenced, New Orleans-born sounds to audiences for the first time. For fans who’ve been waiting since 2019, even a ska album would be welcome, but nine tracks of rock & roll will get crowds dancing along with Chura on the grounds of Stubb’s. 

Stef Chura opens for Dinosaur Jr. on Thursday, Nov. 5 at Stubb’s.

The post Detroit Rocker Stef Chura Returns appeared first on The Austin Chronicle.