Labels: Answer Key Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
This record came out late last year to minimal fan fare as far as I am aware, I know that I didn’t stand around blowing a herald trumpet or driving around in a land rover with a loud-hailer bellowing “Fellow Project is here!”. Yet I should have been doing these things, I should have, for “Stable Life” is a staggeringly good album that ticks a vast number of boxes when it comes to records wot I like. I like to think I keep up with all that is great and good when it comes to emotional post hardcore, but this one has been flying so far under the radar that the US Air Force is attempting at this very minute to retire the B-2 and instead use unsold copies of Stable Life for infiltration missions into enemy air space.
It’s an album that is crammed to the gills with energy and drive, with grooving basslines keeping the focus, yet each song is distinct enough from the last. Fellow Project have utterly managed to produce an album that sounds fresh and vital, which is a hard thing in the world of emotional post hardcore. At various points they evoke memories of early Ribbon Fix (shit, there is a song that even mentions whiskey) with superb male-female vocals that are traded back and forth, and other times the music is more twisting and hardcore, perhaps in line with something like Twelve Hour Turn. Regardless of any comparisons though, this record steadfastly stands on it’s own and it has squirmed it’s way into regular rotation on my record player after some initial doubts, and now it has absolutely established itself as an album I completely appreciate. I love the vocal interplay and how the album manages to bounce back and forth between ferocious melody and slower, melancholy passages that still manage to carry a fair amount of heft. A great contrast.
If I heard this in 2011 when it came out, there is no doubt it’d have been one of my favourites of the year.