Album Review: Stella Rose - Hollybaby (KRO Records)

Those who embark on the New York-to-Los Angeles journey often look to shed fast-paced East Coast neuroticism for the narcotic embrace of the Pacific. This pilgrimage most famously appears in Joan Didion's work as a descent into a landscape where the Santa Ana winds dry out frazzled nerves. Stella Rose sought another kind of revelation when she recorded her latest EP in the City of Angels. Upon arrival, the artist discovered a city whose weather seemed intent on control, with temperatures of 40+C pummeling the city. As a result, the four-track collection, Hollybaby, avoids the sonic typicalities of just a(nother) sun-drenched holiday. It instead resembles a fever dream experienced in a blacked-out Route 66 motel room - a claustrophobic entwinement of pop noir that seduces listeners with the logic of modern nightmares.

Building on the foundation of her 2023 debut, Eyes of Glass, Yves Rothman also produced Hollybaby by weaponizing the studio’s stifling heat to forge the EP's visceral identity. Rothman anchors the recording with 808 thud and Mellotron decay. Rose then navigates this humidity with a live-wire instability; her vocals drift from submerged murmurs to violent clarities. In fact, Rose possesses a poise similar to PJ Harvey circa To Bring You My Love with a whisper-to-snarl vocal style that also embodies a masculine/feminine duality.

The opening title track sets Hollybaby's hymnal tone. It is a letter to Los Angeles' best-kept secret, inspired by the city's parade of apostolic street preachers and heavy dreamers. Brooding Moog basslines drive the piece from the outset. The production is dense with chugging drums and industrial persistence and '90s-inspired guitars.

If speaking in cinematic terms, "MS.45" is the EP’s inciting incident. The title is something of a provocation, referencing Abel Ferrara’s eponymous 1981 cult film, which features a mute seamstress who reclaims agency through bloodshed. Rose channels this into potent metaphorical imagery. The refrain "you trigger my love" strips desire down to its most predatory essentials. Her voice cuts with urban paranoia, ripped straight from the "female Taxi Driver".

"Beautiful Twentysomethings" offers an outward pivot into the melancholy. It constitutes a grayscale dream that trades heat for the chilly coolness of a modern Christiane F, with Rose grounding the track in the model consumer-citizen critique of the French collective Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl. The song explores the nature of beauty in chaotic places, exposing the fantasy world of the digital age. Here, the instrumentation pulls back to allow Rose’s voice to float over a blues heartbeat.

The closer, "Drugstore Romeo," is perhaps the EP's largest room. A power ballad reminiscent of Love and Rockets' Earth + Sun + Moon, it confronts the markedly unglamorous reality of modern drug addiction through lines like, "Heaven’s knocking down on me." The track showcases Rose’s expansive range, moving from atmospheric spoken-word to soaring melody. The song slinks through claustrophobic corridors to evoke the intimate nature of her 2026 tour, which includes a return to Control Club on January 31.

Ultimately, Hollybaby succeeds as an experiment in displacement. Stella Rose left her New York familiarity behind, subjecting her process to the alien heat of Los Angeles. She crystallized a portrait of youth that refuses to be pretty. There is always grime beneath the glamour, and Stella Rose presides over this wake with vitality.