Customer Rating:  
Summary: Best Album by Stellar Kart
Comment: Stellar Kart is an interesting Rock-Punk band. The mid 2000's has seen fellow rockers Hawk Nelson, Eleventyseven and The Rocket Summer emerge in an attempt to appeal to the wide success of influencer Relient K. Clearly Stellar Kart and Hawk Nelson are still striving to improve and although the songs are ear candy, they don't really challenge you like their great influencer. However, if you liked Relient K's first three albums before their breakout success MmHmm, then you should enjoy Expect The Impossible.
Innocent, The Right One and I Give Up are prime examples of nice melodic songs with not too much substance. Dove Award Winning Producer Ian Eskelin has produced an accessible album and his influence appears more on a couple of the stand-out songs Pray and Sunshine, both uplifting tracks sounding somewhat like early All Star United, which is promising. The first single Jesus Loves You is in essence another re-write of the big hit Me and Jesus. The song I keep coming back to is Shine Like The Stars based on Philippians 2:14-16. The song actually starts and ends with a 1980's style synthesizer intro like Van Halen along with the next song Eyes. A bit more substance than the first two albums and the best overall album by Stellar Kart in my opinion.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stellar Kart Rocks Pretty Hard
Comment: Stellar Kart's newest CD, Expect The Impossible, is much more than I expected. I've never really listened to their music before. I purchased the CD from Pepsi points and was really impressed with what I heard. Their sound is much different than what I typically listen to (i.e., Starfield, Telecast, Salvador, etc.), but different is good in this case. I highly recommend this CD!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Greatly Improving
Comment: I bought the first 2 Stellar Kart cds and saw the newest one advertised on Amazon for a pretty low price, so I went ahead and ordered it, but did not have very high expectations. I thought the first CD was great lyrically, but not very good musically. The second one was a little better, but still a bit on the cheesy side. I really like the newest CD quite a bit. Their musical ability is improving. The guitars are sounding better and the tunes are a little more catchy now. Their lyrics are still very spiritual, which is fine with me. I think there was quite a bit of improvement over the first CDs here. It's still not quite in the league of Hawk Nelson or Relient K, but they're catching up, in my opinion. Listen to some samples and see what you think.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's Got Cowbell!
Comment: Really . . . it does. David Lee Roth once said music in the '80s smiled. By capturing elements of '80s music, that's exactly what this album does. I don't like a lot of Contemporary Christian music, but this album is good --very good--from beginning to end. They don't compromise a modern sound while experimenting with elements from previous generations.
It's got a little of Def Leopard's (or Blue Oyster Cult's) cowbell, Van Halen's 1984 synthesizer, and various other '80s synth sounds similar to Ah-Ha or Cutting Crew. Compared to the normal dark and disturbed albums prevalent in secular as well as Christian music, this is more than a refreshing diversion.
It's great to see a modern group with a modern sound that can capture in sound and mood the essence of what made a decade of music so popular.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, But Very Short
Comment: This album is a step in somewhat of a new direction for Stellar Kart, as there are a number of poppy tracks mixed in with the occasional pop-punk throwback. My two complaints are the length of the CD, only 10 tracks and about 30 minutes of music, plus there are a couple of tracks that sound like Linkin Park, which is just not a good sound for this band. The sunny pop of "Innocent" to begin the record is classic Stellar Kart, and the ballad "Jesus Loves You" proves that these guys write and sing the songs they feel in their hearts as opposed to some corporate, mainstream spit-shined glossy band who only does what their record label tells them to do. "Automatic" is another song with lots of hooks and guitars. Despite the length of the album, there are enough hooks in the upbeat anthem "Sunshine" and the guitar-studded pop punk of "The Rigt One" (which recalls MxPx even moreso than track #4 on their previous CD) to keep the appetite of their fans satisfied. This band continues to gradually improve, but one does get the feeling that they have not quite hit their peak yet on their three albums to date.
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