As soon as the sweet and meditative solo piano intro winds up on dramatic album opener, ‘Lost In Time’ it’s abundantly clear that Brooklyn’s most savagely overlooked New Wavers, Stellastarr* are dismissing the flash and brash thrash of their curly hyper-pop in favour of something a little more enduring, more personal. What ever happened to the maxim ‘if it’s not broke, why fix it?’ It got fixed, I guess, along with a half-dozen other impractical and insensitive suggestions that usually got put to the creative ego. If they’d given us more of the same we’d have accused them of being one-trick ponies. When they tender something reasonably, if not significantly, different we accuse them of betraying the fans. But you know what, that shiver that shot down your spine when earballing those fuzzy, crisscrossing three-way vocals on the scrumptious ‘Somewhere Across Forever’ on the band’s quirky and unpredictable debut? Well, that didn’t come about by Shawn Christenen and the band standing around and rehashing the last trick they’d learned. You got excited because they got excited, and if you want to continue getting excited, you just like them, are going to have to move on. Look at it another way: with the last album you scored a frantic quickie around the back of the club on your way home with a girl or a boy you scarcely knew the name of. It was thoroughly enjoyable, of course, but this time you actually get chance to find out a little more about them, what makes them tick, what their innermost desires are, what turns them on, where they get their kicks. It takes a little more effort, but it’s ultimately much more satisfying. You don’t agree? Well I guess you’re the kind of fella that’s usually best doing it alone, then.
Whilst some critics would have us believe that the band’s sophomore release, ‘Harmonies For The Haunted’ bares absolutely no similarity whatsoever to its sparkling predecessor, it’s worth remembering that that album too was marked by some peculiarly dark, intense and ponderous moments. ‘In These Walls’, ‘Moongirl’ and ‘Untitled’ were, afterall, hardly what I’d call ‘pop’, and you’d have a fight on your hands trying to retrieve anything quite so lacking in pallor here, save for the gentle and ruminative ‘On My Own’ and the occasionally flatulent ‘Island Lost At Sea’. It’s more serious, more atmospheric, yes, but how long could anyone in their right mind keep up the kind of zany, thrashing quirkiness that characterized their debut? Not that it’s absent entirely. ‘Damn This Foolish Heart’ and ‘Precious Games, pop and crackle into first class coco-ing form and the crooning vocal spreads of ‘Love and Longing’ prove practically ticklish.
All The Cure, XTC, Duran Duran, U2 and David Byrne gags we rolled out on the release of the debut are as relevant now as they were then and you’d be hard-pressed indeed to find anything as shockingly good as ‘My Coco’ – but it’s a cleaner, maturer album extending Stellastarr*’s emotional reach and who knows, perhaps even their much sought market reach.