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Steven Gullett - Cheap Reflections
By DIMITRI MONROE - DETROIT METRO TIMES
AUGUST 21, 2002

Steven Gullett is the apparently tortured blackheart behind Dayton’s best punk band, the Mystery Addicts. This solo album (mainly a collection of demos) is hot on the heels of last year’s critically acclaimed Mystery Addicts full-length, Unluck and Shame. Steven is among the most promisingly literate songwriters amid the wave of subterranean rock ’n’ rollers, penning vitriolic lyrics about failure, despair, and self-loathing.

With all its nagging portents of gloom and futility, Cheap Reflections probably hits me too close to the bone. In “The Payoff,” Gullett laments the harrowing disappointment of insanely pursuing an ever-receding, unreasonable dream: “If this is it, it’s all you get/have you made your millions yet?/have you made your peace with that?”

...Gullett continues to outgrow his once ubiquitous influences to find his own voice as a writer — choosing his own words, recalling his own experiences, conveying his own truth...

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