stumptone

"Gravity Suddenly Released" named top area album release of the 00's...
- Dallas Observer
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-01-07/music/the-best-area-album-releases-of-the-00s/3/

"...Meandering, echoing, exquisitely melodic but never predictable, Plavidal's sensibilities blithely step right off the indie rock ship and into Oz. He's a fantasist who loves the warm texture of acoustic guitars, a traditionalist who loves tweaked-out sound effects and new recording technologies. That he manages to balance these two conflicting camps has much to do with his sticking to very personal and connective themes. Travel, exploration, weather, organic transmutations--things that evolve and take you with them. This is delicate beautiful music often pushed to even more beautifully raw agitation, constant restlessness dosed with gentle goodwill."
-Christina Rees

"Gravity Suddenly Released” is a great, highly addictive sonic bath that conflates indie-“roots” sounds with psychedelia in a manner that recalls the best of “Piper”-through-“Meddle”-era Pink Floyd, Skip Spence, Elliott Smith, the Flaming Lips, and Mercury Rev. Its songs recede into ambient fields like soundtracks to dreams.
-Ken Shimamoto, from ILOVEFTW.COM

I don't know if the title track is about death, but at the close of a decade that's provided plenty of reasons—personal and universal—to contemplate the Big Sleep, that's what I'm taking away from it. And the exultant feel of that moment when the grounded acoustic guitars and harmonica give way to soaring electric guitar and singer Chris Plavidal repeating "head over heels over head..." makes it sound like the beginning of an awesome journey. The rest of the kinetic album—available in a beautiful, marbled vinyl version, by the way—is restlessly full of references to motion, and is almost as beautifully moving. —Jesse Hughey, DALLAS OBSERVER

"Brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking -- that's Stumptone in a nutshell. The Fort Worth foursome is a wash of ambient, visceral rock delicate enough to cushion dreams and off-kilter enough to hasten nightmares. ...They've set the bar quite high for anyone who dares follow."
- Preston Jones, FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

"Somewhere Syd Barrett and Skip Spence are smiling."
-Fred Mills, from MAGNET

"The guitar parts can be fantastically interstellar. When this band soars they burst through the atmosphere and the ride is hard but fun."
-Jerry Kranitz From AURAL INNOVATIONS