“Ferried Away” – Stay Inside Album Review

Review by Aidan Smith –

When Stay Inside released the lead single off their sophomore album Ferried Away, it took little time to make a huge impact on me – honest lyrics about growing up and growing away from people you were once inseparable from. A killer – I mean killer – horn section transcended “A Backyard” to the top of my weekly Last.FM charts for almost the entire summer. “The shoulder splits and I move too quick, you mail me a family picture but I can’t get the nerve to call.”

The sardonic honesty and reminder to stay in touch with oneself, and their loved ones, strikes a nerve – it demands that you take something away from it. Reckoning with the ghosts of the past, Stay Inside frames this album around this notion; the hurt and pain that comes with growing older.

Stay Inside, a Brooklyn-based emo band, let it be known that they hail from the northeast. The final track “Steeplechase” uses the 1907 fire at Steeplechase Park at what is now Coney Island as the framework for the feeling of loss and the passage of time.

The final bridge of the album sums up many of its main themes – “Leave a light on the shore for me” is evocative of a feeling so timeless, deep, and resonant to me personally – it sums up the album so simply, yet so completely. An album rarely creates such a deep moral impact on me, but Ferried Away forces you to think about your connections, it’s a pretty uplifting concept for an emo band.

Quickly, Stay Inside has become one of my favorite bands in the scene right now. Their music is refreshing, and grand – it has the potential to make you feel and think but also the energy and drive to take in all of the sounds the band incorporates.

“A Town To Give Up In,” a standout on the album, reminisces on the end of a hometown relationship once somebody moves away – the separation and the changes that occur in that extended time apart. “Brass tacks jab my arms every time I make a sound,” “Drive on home, you’ve got it all backward out there / Aren’t you over it? You should be over it” You’re raising your voice now, in a Turkey Hill parking lot The strip mall lights humming their siren song / Get out of my head.”

Ferried Away contains many of the same elements I find impressive on records like Cosmic Thrill Seekers or Much Love, and it possesses and honest, raw quality that hits home.

Maybe I’m giving music too much power, but hey, Ferried Away prompted me to make a phone call to a friend who I haven’t spoken to in a while – those connections are important, and sometimes it takes a push, inadvertently through an emo album or not – your call on the specificity. Either way, Stay Insides’ sophomore album conjured lots of feelings in me, clearly, it’s totally worth a listen if you’re at all into indie rock with a little bit of edge – and it’s an early contender for album of the year for me. Bless Brooklyn bands – Brooklyn emos rise!

 

Cover image from Album Of The Year.

Steeplechase Park Image from Brooklyn Visual Heritage.