"Amanda Palmer gone psychedelic and retro -- one of the rawest, most original aesthetics we've heard in awhile." - Keyboard Magazine "...a continually-shifting arsenal of styles ranging from ragtime to science fiction, all while maintaining personal awareness and a keen sense of self. Stephanie effortlessly does with her piano what others with computers lie awake dreaming of" - WomensRadio.com review "You hear intimate confessions that balance winsome and anguished singing in an ongoing dialogue with her keyboard, which alternates rock 'n' roll drive, boogie-woogie bounce and a dark severity that recalls classical etudes and the brooding fire of avant-garde jazz master Cecil Taylor. ...Rearick's balance of "happy accidents" and deliberate form shows artistic maturity, even as she grows increasingly expressive. She has shorn some precious techno-baroque effects and cranked up emotional resonance. Her protective weapon is music, loaded with creative energy, vision and hope." - Capital Times album review "Like Elliott Smith, Rearick can take piano chords and turn them into a dream. Her mastery of the keyboard isn't just technical, it's emotional. She conjures otherworldly feelings right from the start of Democracy. The opening track, "Flyboy," is pure childhood innocence, wrapped in the whirling excitement of carnival music. From there the album gets edgy and nervous, referencing the macho arrogance of the president: "And if you had a market for a category hurricane, you'd rev up the motorcade and show 'em what you've got." On "Birthright," Rearick openly confronts our collective acquiescence in a not-so-new world order: "You taught your children to breathe free and now they're gasping/If they could get the air to speak they'd be asking/Where were you, when you knew?" ...Democracy is good enough to stand in the company of the best independent music being made right now. By all measures, it deserves to find its way to Pitchfork and to Seattle's tastemaking KEXP radio." - Isthmus "Her vocal overdubbing and harmonizing are marvelous, bringing forth a multitude of possibilities as organically as a fistful of hollyhock seeds. The piano continues as a stronger and stronger element, left-hand parts tromping out a framework that a weaker player would have to wheedle out of a rhythm section. Both piano and vocal come in and out of a production treatment in which aspects move from large, sometimes obscuring amounts of processing to the purest of simplicity. When this takes place during the course of a single song, it is as if the listener has fallen asleep in an antique auction and woken up alone, back in his own bedroom. Several pieces such as "Twilight Fog" have memorable melodic lines, allowed an amazing breadth through the subtlest of production, the performer confident enough to practically ignore her own strengths. Rearick also presents interesting cover versions of pieces by Tom Waits, Brian Eno, and David Bowie." - Eugene Chadbourne at itunes "For Madison's Stephanie Rearick, labels like 'classical' and 'arty' don't do justice to the genre-bending music box of sound that comes from her upright piano. It's by turns adventurous and accessible, ancient and futuristic, comforting and scary. On her 2005 album Star Belly, sounds from an old west barroom mingle with high concept cabaret and psychedelic distortion." - The Onion "Rearick's a genre-bounding vocalist, keyboard player and trumpeter who takes great care bringing together things indie with her classical and art-music influences. The gorgeous multitracked vocal chorale on the otherwise simple piano piece "Hymn" sets the hook here, and then Rearick is off to the races, jangling through mind-expanding psychedelia on the title cut, herking and jerking along in madcap material that bears the stamp of English dancehall ditties ... Rearick's no imitator, and frankly, the city's lucky to have such an adventurous singer-songwriter in its midst." - Isthmus "Stephanie Rearick's angelic (and layered) voice blends with a simple piano melody on "Hymn" for a surreal, mesmerizing and prayerful effect that actually gives me chills every time I hear it." - Sea Of Tranquility "Imagine Tom Waits reincarnated as Debussy, playing Joni Mitchell versions of Edgar Allen Poe poems on a 1920s era piano, and you get an approximate sense of the influences singer/pianist Stephanie Rearick channels on the way to making her very unique, idiosyncratic art pop." - Berkshire Eagle "[Rearick] has sharper instrumental skills than most... she's not afraid to shut up and play an instrumental. The Man Who Stole Tomorrow is almost too lovely -- but her writing also displays a grim loopiness she'd do well to cultivate, and on Not Another Minute she sounds like the love child of Tori Amos and Robyn Hitchcock." - The Chicago Reader