Stef Chura showed Shea Stadium BK that Detroit also has its Millennial, art spaces developing, as well. The young woman appeared more like a Brooklynite in the carpeted stage of Shea with her chilled eccentricities and counter-culture chords that have swept up the youth of this generation. On tour and readying excitement for her debut album, Messes, which will be released January 27, I got the feeling that Chura will be a songstress for those countering mainstream radio, in exchange, for songs of artful anarchism.
Counter-culture has a million different meanings, but it boils down to an overarching idea that the “standard” ways of thinking, feeling, and portraying one’s self fail to captivate or guide humanity properly. This may be a really deep meaning for a concert review, but it leads to what makes Stef Chura so appealing as an artist and with the potential to formulate her own, eclectic fame like Bon Iver, whom since reviewing his how has stayed on my mind. You see, in an odd way, counter-culture has become its own, normative culture, and Stef Chura sings to the odd discrepancy every person feels at thinking they are distant and different from how society works only to fall into its same trappings. The “full-circle” sentiments of her concert/music elaborated the multiple meanings of her upcoming album’s title Messes.
Are we all just walking “messes” trying to figure out how to clean our issues, insecurities, thoughts. feelings, etc? Is society a mess because humanity is mess? Again, deep questions, from an artist that surprised me with the casual depth of her music. Chura’s music is self-described as “grunge-pop”, which is why it is easily comparable to the 90’s rock sonics of Millennials’ childhood. Yet, Chura is also comparable to the lyrics of frustration that 90’s icon Kurt Cobain shelled out for a generation unwilling to hide its societal woes. This, definitely, explains the disgruntled drawl of which Chura sings her lyrics as if human decisions of destructiveness, either self or other, have exhausted/ enraged her. The resonance to grunge’s “in your face” style mixed in with pop’s gentler sensibilities makes for a tasty blend and emulates what Stef Chura sings to: the battle between the facades we wear as social persons versus the face we carry as human beings.
The audience ate up Chura’s own adrenalized performance of her music, which is coming out so soon she can practically taste it. Yet, when people read my reviews they enjoy my description of the artist’s personality, which in many ways, feeds their sound. Chura gives off the vibe of a smart, sarcastic woman with a quick eye for the social plays of others, which, in many ways, she exudes in her music. She drops dry-witted jokes like they were apart of the air she breathes, and is not at all about showmanship or even the physical expression of chaos/craziness that “grungers” can evoke. She stands coolly with her guitar, plays her songs, and lets her voice and lyrics carry the weight of her perceived maddening. She has the sweet voice natural for pop music, but emotes perfectly, the grunge genre’s anxious vibe and hits high notes like a spear piercing the balloon of your “reality”. Hence, I look forward to Stef Chura’s own type of fame, like Bon Iver, where they create a language, style, traditions, and bond between their fans whom agree: society needs to counter its old ways. For More Information On Stef Chura Click Here.
