First Listen: Cellar Walls "New Cells"
Pleasantly unexpected solo material from multi-instrumentalist Stephen Welch
I first became familiar with Stephen Welch as the drummer for Wichita Falls metal band The Kept. He’s an awesome drummer, and my photo of Stephen on the kit is one of my favorite shots from the summer of 2023.
Pretty metal, right? Imagine my surprise when I got my first listen to “New Cells,” the new electropop album from Stephen’s solo project Cellar Walls. The sound of New Cells is so different from what I expected, I thought for a moment Spotify had taken me to one of those screwed up pages where they have the wrong artist cataloged.
I doublechecked.
No, this is the right page…
I heard unexpectedly nuanced pop music. Welch says Cellar Walls, a band-of-one for which he performed all the parts on New Cells, comes from a list of influences that reads like a playlist at a college radio station. “In the sense of this album and my style, I would credit Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Cake, and Radiohead for their heavy respective influences,” he told me via DM. Personally, I also heard some favorable similarity to Foster the People in Welch’s soft-spoken delivery on songs like the leadoff track Grateful.
There’s also something in Grateful that brings to mind Africa by Toto — the descending guitar melody and an international feel, perhaps. The newly released New Cells was actually recorded in 2021 and carries an almost world music flavor to some of the songs, a sound that stems from Welch’s love for experimentation and exotic instruments.
“I was playing a lot of one-man-band and loop style shows, and really wanted to solidify some concepts I had going,” Welch said. “At the time, I was composing a lot of hip hop beats (check out Worlds Greatest Tag Team) and I had some that felt like they needed to go a different direction. So I had an album that was half creating songs from instrumental ideas and half applying instrumental concepts to song ideas,” Welch continued. “Then I layered a bunch of shakers and real aux percussion for depth. Also my little brother likes to get me obscure instruments for my birthdays, so I was sure to feature the kalimba in ‘Grateful’ and some cool layered Stylophone in ‘Menucia’.”
Welch’s fascination with unique instruments and unconventional sounds definitely shows itself on New Cells, an album of lightweight, inoffensive pop mixed with instrumental tracks that would be right at home in the library of a production house. Relaxing vibe aside, don’t sleep on Welch’s guitar work on New Cells; there’s some quality noodling going on when you least expect it.
There’s a soothing sound to New Cells, which I found progressively more relaxing as the runtime wound down, and I discovered on the second playthrough, New Cells ambient sound is also a great soundtrack for drifting off on an afternoon nap. Cellar Walls’ ability to both entertain and soothe is undeniable. Give “New Cells” a listen and you will see what I mean.
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