Review: “Pain Is a Season” by Stress Dolls

Recurrent and horrifically inevitable — this is the thread connecting suffering and death. Stress Dolls’ “Pain Is a Season” confronts this connection through different vignettes of living under the specter of chronic illness. But don’t be put off by the morbid suggestion; the presentation is one that is raw and tender in its story.

Listening to this album, I felt a special connection to the storytelling because, like frontwoman Chelsea O’Donnell, I have Crohn’s disease, so I feel like I understand and can relate to the album’s content.

The release as a whole has a sound I would generically say is a meeting of indie rock and mid-’90s/early 2000’s alt-country with lighter solo, piano, and harmonic arrangements that break up the otherwise high-energy tunes. It helps having a singer whose own investment in the music comes across as winsome authenticity.

That said, the album is not flawless. At times, the emotional content can feel like variations on a theme. Yet Crohn’s disease is a multifaceted illness which has comorbidity with maladies physical and mental, such as arthritis, migraine headaches, severe depression, and a variety of cancers resulting from the immunosuppressive drugs used to treat it. It stunts your growth, makes eating an act of suffering, and 70% to 90% of the time requires surgery to treat — it is incurable. To say the reality of living with this can be a bit of a drag is an understatement. I only describe this illness because as much as people take pride in saying it doesn’t define them, in the case of Crohn’s, you can hardly shut it out of your awareness. It’s always there and, like the seasons, will cycle.

Throughout the album, I hear Wilco, 10,000 Maniacs, Velocity Girl, and the Pretenders, to name a few offhand. There are quite a few collaborating artists on this particular project, and the dynamism of sound reflects that. In terms of experimentation, the envelope is not particularly pushed on this release. There is certainly a lineage to be drawn to the past, but it works here. The concept I believe is rather strong, even without the personal context, but without that piece, the album might feel one-note. It’s rare for an album treading in the long-cast shadow of music history to be visible, but “Pain Is a Season” at the least is seen.

Track Breakdown

1. “Missing”

Light piano arpeggios and a transient melody evoke the image of the verdure of summer giving way to the decay of fall.

2. “Mall Walker”

After the pretty-sounding introduction, we hop into the machine — a lighter tune about what I interpret as a cruel sort of arrested growth. A reminiscing person goes to a mall, is transfixed by their own reflection in a store mirror, and is crushed by a painful childhood memory.

The sense of isolation and alienness in their youth is bleak and persists as a desire to disappear. A declaration of being stunted, the journey is complete, and all that remains is wandering without purpose. The labyrinthine mall, in a “Glass Menagerie” invocation of the past, presents a world of fragility and wanting.

3. “Forget Kindly”

A needling, bittersweet, subtly resentful dedication to either a crush or ex-partner. The theme is of always trying to keep up, of trying to assert one’s existence. There’s a beautiful interplay between the outward excitement and vitality of trying to live on your own, young in the city, and the multitude of breaking points where it all falls apart. The city is full of life and potentially love, but you’re stuck in a basement trying to figure out how to escape. There’s always something new around the corner, but it just reminds you of everything you’re denied. The world is a beautiful place best when shared, but sometimes, the one you share it with just doesn’t care.

4. “Nashville”

Ah, the dashed dreams of making it in Nashville. A song about disillusionment, recovery, and wrestling against what is lost. I get some retro-sounding indie rock in the

instrumentation, with the same rhythm hits you’d hear in indie-pop.

You never heal fully in a hospital; you try to be there as little as you can. With every hospital stay, you have a nagging sense that something has been interrupted. Some thread in your life got tangled and lags behind you. You don’t go back there futzing with the Gordian knot. Forever forward, permanence is only an idea and there is no present.

5. “Capillaries” (ft. Carmen and Lizzy)

An interlude song that’s quick in message and delivery. It details the blunt act of bruising due to stress, the idea of crying before someone in such a state. It’s the understanding that love is, in the curmudgeonly view, grotesque. Or perhaps the face of a person, clearly seen, is something else. 

There is a real vocal anguish that describes, harshly, its experience at first blush, then grows into a state of ambiguity and unearthly serenity. This short piece evolves into a clear statement: I can only love who I love; I can only open up if they love me back (if it happens).

6. “Noise”

“Noise” is a deconstructed song at first, a dream dispelled. A dusty plunking acoustic rhythm opens up gradually into more explosive periods of electric guitar, telling the story of coming home again from the hospital and when you finally snap a little. In spite of the snap, you have a newfound confidence, and life breathes again — a new excursion into the utterly decadent and uncaring world.

It’s a classic slow build into an ecstatic jam. The contrast of it hits at precisely the right time in the listen of the album. I recommend listening at a reasonable volume because the overdrive is played fast and loose and by the end, the aural metaphor (which I believe all good instrumental sections should strive for) is ambiguous. I’m left to wonder what noise is in this context.

7. “Takeaway”

A lo-fi outro with the sound of gulls briefly present in the distance leads into the final track of this album. It’s less a story told than a summary feeling O’Donnell uses to end the album in a thoughtful series of images of encroaching twilight highlighting the little light that remains. It’s stoic, candid, and a deconstruction of the more flushed-out sounds on the rest of the release — the singer alone with her guitar. The lingering concern is that more loss is awaiting down the pipeline as the world sinks into night. The only companionship — or, more broadly, life — is illuminated by a dying flame, and all that we’re left with is “What’s next?”

The Verdict

“Pain is a Season” nails the experience of living with Crohn’s disease and depression. It presents portraits of the failed relationships, constant concessions, social isolation, and pressure to abandon hope in the face of fatal self-awareness that come with it. Being chronic conditions, these are at best managed; they never fade away, and even in the best of the times, the cruel possibility of their resurgence remains an albatross around the neck of the sufferer. In this sense, it is rather perfect that the album does not reach an uplifting conclusion or romanticize its subject matter.

The flip side of this is that the album’s success depends greatly on an understanding of the context, and that is dependent very much on the listener. While the release is full of evocative, vibrant instrumentation, atypical and ambitious lyrics, there is the risk that on some level, all the songs are cut from a similar cloth.

This is a self-concerned album that delves (possibly to a fault) into personal anguish that has ultimately no answer. There is a helplessness the listener is forced to witness and ultimately share in. As such, it’s not a release I’d universally recommend. For people familiar with chronic illness and who enjoy angst and suffering in their listening. I believe “Pain is a Season” will be understood and accepted on its best terms. For more casual, less literary listeners, the solid rock rhythmic and melodic foundations may be undercut by the pain O’Donnell unabashedly shares in her performance. All this is to say: I find it a good album but undeniably specific in appeal.