William Steffey creates lush, multi-layered pop landscapes, the music on Roadstar washing over the listener like a cool summer rain. Steffey’s instrumentation is mostly electronic, synthetic rhythms and motorized percussion banging on your door like a drunken Fuller brush man. As such, Steffey’s vocals are often buried in the mix, an effective voice caressing mildly oblique lyrics that are riddled with imagery and delivered with a healthy amount of passion. Roadstar was produced by Steffey, who could use a different set of ears in the studio to smooth out his sound. Turn down the electronics, raise the vocals in the mix and you’d have a wonderfully atmospheric modern pop album to rival artists like Tindersticks or Swell.
-Rev. Keith A. Gordon
