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September 26-October 2, 2002 music Happiness Motel
Ambient pop artist Andy Stochansky likes everyday people. There is a thing known as ambient pop. It is a good thing with great presentation: a nice house with swell wallpaper. Yet, too often, someone amongst the ambientistes insultingly forgets an essential element: the pop -- the load-bearing wall between home and its decoration. Composer-lyricist-singer-multi-instrumentalist Andy Stochansky made himself one of ambi-pop’s finest interior decorators with the tchotchke-electronic layerings of Radio Fusebox and While You Slept -- records that had an eerie Eno-like quality akin to that egghead’s Another Green World. But with the guitar-strewn elegies of Five Star Motel (Private Music); Stochansky has become an electro-laced Ian Schrager; a master conceptual troubadour and architect of poetic intent with an aching, warm voice evocative of Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley without the death-wish wonkiness. "I needed change badly," says Stochansky of his move from Eno-ness to the subtly-shaded pathos-lacking guitar pop of Motel. "I really wanted to tell stories in the most simple way. If I honestly sat and pondered whether I'm working on Œdifferent planes' I'd probably never get anything done. I work more from instinct." Blame an education closer to film soundtrack composition (Ontario College of Arts & Design) and session work for the likes of Jonathan Richman, Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls and Jane Siberry for keeping Stochansky's instincts for atmospheric music sharp. It's helped him create an elegantly filmic sound at one with the cinematic vérité of his lyrics. "I see all songs as short films. They really have to have a storyline for it to work for me." Motel includes fictional tales of top guns like "Wonderful (It's Superman)," true human crimes like "Wedding Song" ("about a princess from the Middle East who fell in love with a U.S. G.I. and ran from her family to be with him in middle America") and beautiful, romantic illusions like the depth-diving poetics of "22 Steps." "I knew how many steps it took from the sidewalk to her front door in high school. I never knocked," says Stochansky of this tale of yearning that seems to contain several brief realities crammed into one slight, sharply defined moment.
Still, it's the weirdly prayerful "Mavis Said" that has the most dueling of all of Five Star Motel's dualities. Think Magnolia's multi-layered ideal set to oozingly delicious melodic song. 'Mavis Said' started when I was in a coffee shop listening to people around me that -- for lack of better terms -- were Œbelow the poverty line.' When Œreal' people wish for things from God -- and I use the term God in a very general way -- they don't wish for a cure for cancer. They wish for the rent to be paid for one month, or to not be robbed for two weeks straight. I write songs by watching the world and trying and make something beautiful or sublime out of the everyday or the mundane." Ask him if he thinks that his audiences get or soak up the sorrow of his lyrics, he seems annoyed. "Come to one of my two Philly shows. I just make the best music I can. Contrary to popular belief, this really isn't a competition." Andy Stochansky, Thu., Sept. 26, 8 p.m., The Rotunda, 4012 Walnut St.; Sun., Sept. 29, 7:30 p.m., The Point, 880 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, 610-527-0988. 
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