-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Starsabout
ALBUM...: Longing For Home
GENRE...: Progressive Rock
STYLE...: Art Rock, Dream Pop, Post-rock, Nostalgiawave, Sophistipop
YEAR....: 2017
LABEL...: Progressive Promotion
COUNTRY.: Poland
PLACE...: Bialystok, podlaskie
FORMED..: 2011
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 853 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 8
SIZE....: 283.17 MB
URL..: https://www.facebook.com/starsabout
https://starsabout.bandcamp.com/album/longing-for-home
https://www.backgroundmagazine.nl/CDreviews/Starsabout2x.html
http://www.progressor.net/review/starsabout_2017.html
https://artrock.pl/recenzje/54025/starsabout_longing_for_home.html
http://www.musikreviews.de/reviews/2018/Starsabout/Longing-For-Home--Halflights
https://mlwz.pl/recenzje/plyty/19535-starsabout-longing-for-home
- TRACKLIST
1 Blue Caress 6:34
2 Longing For Home 5:06
3 Cry Me No Tears 7:10
4 Hourglass 5:30
5 Stay 4:17
6 I Will Never 4:29
7 Thief 4:27
8 Million Light Years 8:38
Total Playtime: 46:11
There's no wind strong enough
To dry our flooded hearts...
Dear Listener,
Enjoy this second journey with us.
*
Released one or two year after, you can find many subtle changes over its
Airbagish predecessor. We can feel some 1st-era Pineapple Thief touch here.
It keeps on nice-and-easy-listening post-rock genre playing.
They're like good wine then. Longing For Home will get even finer with time,
while the debut album will become a gem. They will get even more pleasant to
listen to. Enjoy these favorite #4 Hourglass, #7 Thief and the closing track
moments.
*
Longing For Home is the second album from Poland's Starsabout, the band
releasing their debut EP in 2014 before revealing the indie rock lite of
Halflights two years later. With that album selling out its initial short,
independent run, Progressive Promotions Records have offered an opportunity
not only to catch up with this outfit's early output, but also to sample
their latest wares, Longing For Home. If the band's first full length foray
was happy to sit in an indie vein, with mere nods to something more
progressive, Longing feels like a much more confident swipe of angst. Yes,
they are still keeping things contained and confined within a tight perimeter
of bound up emotion which is only released in small doses but there's a much
more assured and single minded approach this time out. Interestingly, where
you might expect that to mean that Starsabout have stretched their wings and
are looking to broaden their horizons, in truth the opposite is true, Longing
an album that finds this Polish outfit creating a much more defined identity
of their own. Don't get me wrong, we're still playing within shimmering
indie-rock walls here, but now there seems to be less willingness to chase
other band's sounds or scenes and instead this album gets about the job of
piecing together a melodic, enigmatic offering.
To be fair, if you're looking for an album crammed with excitement, then from
its very name, you might well have garnered that Longing For Home isn't
really working within that remit. Heartbreaking, relaxing, languid and
contained, are words you could easily associate with the pinging title track
and its gentle pinpricks of light, whereas "Cry Me No Tears" does a similar
job but this time without even caring about offering light at the end of the
tunnel. The ability of singer/guitarist Piotr Trypus and his guitar-mate
Tomasz Kryjan to intertwine moody melody lines what allows the undoubtedly
downbeat meanderings to not become too weighed down by their own emotion.
Quietly but effectively going about their business, bassist Piotr Ignatowicz
and drummer Sergiusz Pruszy?"ski never get too caught up in offering complex
asides or offshoots. Patience is key for the pair, the slow steady
"Hourglass" benefiting hugely from the duo sticking neatly within a
restrained framework. And yet, when the lengthy and most interesting closing
piece, "Million Light Years", does offer the two a little more to do, the
skill and dexterity they show makes their ability to keep it simple elsewhere
all the more impressive.
Longing For Home is, for me, a considerable step up for Starsabout. The
band's debut interesting without ever really delivering on the promise it
clearly shows. Here however, things are taken up a few notches. A little more
exuberance wouldn't go amiss and a few punchier moments would possibly help
keep you fully tuned in as the enigmatic soundscapes play out, but it's no
exaggeration to suggest that thankfully, the background music of the band's
debut has evolved into something much more engaging and involving.
*
It s easy to be surprised and delighted by music that breaks new ground and
pushes boundaries, or at least tries to; at the very least, a novelty factor
surrounds such music. A harder sell is music that doesn t set out to push
boundaries or blow minds but rather, sees fit to continue to mine the veins
of the tried and true, and search for precious, if familiar materials
therein.
Such music has to rely on trickier-to-achieve qualities such as sincerity,
emotional connection, and solid craftsmanship to leave its mark but that s
precisely what Poland s Starsabout have done with Longing for Home, their
remarkably solid debut full-length.
As hinted by the album s title, a sense of yearning to belong, to find
purpose and meaning permeates the lyrics. The title track finds Piotr
Trypus lamenting Maybe someday I will find/A place for me, one truly mine
while Hourglass is a gentle, acoustic guitar-driven ode to carpe diem:
Time won t play with you/It has all the cards/Time won t play with you/You
will be gone. Meanwhile, I Will Never gets downright existential: Time
took away another season/With every step, I m falling into the void But I
will never embrace the night/I won t surrender, broken inside.
But to the quartet s credit, they take a refreshingly mature, even subdued
approach to all of this angst with their music. For all of the lyrics sturm
und drang, Starsabout can never be accused of wallowing; their music is too
refined, elegant, and confident for that.
Like The Mary Onettes, with whom they share some musical similarities, it s
pretty easy to map Starsabout s musical DNA. Indeed, their Bandcamp tags
include Jeff Buckley, The Blue Nile, and Cocteau Twins. The band does
occasionally let loose in a climactic, post-rock manner, so brace yourself
during Hourglass s bridge and the final moments of Stay. But Starsabout
is usually content to sit back and draw you in with shimmering guitars and
glassy melodies ( Blue Caress, the title track), drifts of Verve-y textures
( Thief, Million Light Years ), and of course, Trypus stirring, lilting
vocals which all combine to sublime effect.
Put simply, Longing for Home is must-hear music for fans of any of the
aforementioned artists, or fans of thoughtful, atmospheric indie-rock in
general. It s an album that s thoroughly enjoyable in the here and now even
as it leaves you excited for how the group might mature in the coming years.
Considering how self-assured and mature they sound with just an album and an
EP under their belts, I think we ll be hearing good things from Starsabout
for a long time to come.
*
Prolusion. Polish band STARSABOUT was formed back in 2011, and following an
initial EP in 2014 they released their debut album "Halflights" in 2016. One
year later the band was signed to German label Progressive Promotion Records,
who released their second album "Longing for Home" towards the tail end of
the year.
Analysis. While Starsabout are signed to a label specializing in progressive
rock, Starsabout as a band are among those constellations that have more of a
diluted attachment to progressive rock as such. One can hear the ties and
attachments to the genre, but as a whole totality this is a band that is more
about indie rock than progressive rock as such. The compositions are fairly
straight forward affairs, with a slight tendency to include gentler,
dream-laden passages in certain parts of the song, otherwise pace and
momentum stick pretty much in one gear only. Slight pace alterations come and
go along the way of course, but in terms of structure there isn't too much of
what you'd expect from a progressive rock band here. Twilight mood, softly
dark melancholia is what this band delivers though, and they are good at it.
Soft, shimmering guitar textures adds a slight touch of post-rock and
psychedelia to the proceedings, while the steady bass and drums at times
gives the material something of a post-punk or new wave vibe. The vocals
tends to emphasize this, which in sum gives this production something of a
mainstream touch throughout. As far as progressive rock references goes, the
more atmospheric laden creations of Airbag is a possible reference. If Airbag
ever started to hit an indie rock vein I would expect material like this to
appear. A few of the songs here actually comes across as singer/songwriter
creations given expanded arrangements, if that comes across as a clue on what
to expect from this album. This is a quality production throughout,
showcasing a band keenly aware of their strengths and sticking to their main
selling points as I experience this creation. A worthwhile production - as
long as you do not come at it with the expectation to discover progressive
rock in any of it's many guises.
Conclusion. If you tend to enjoy bands that have something of a foundation in
mainstream pop and rock music that expands their palette by incorporating
subtle touches pulled from progressive rock in general and modern era
progressive rock in particular, Starsabout is a band that merits a check.
Indie rock is perhaps the best description for the music on this CD, with a
liberal amount of nods in the direction of new wave and post-punk, and subtle
inclusions of post-rock and modern psychedelic rock details.
*
... and to think that it was only thanks to the German publisher and the
album that came to me from across the western border that I learned about
another extremely interesting and practically unknown band from our country!
Who are we talking about? Well, this band is Starsabout from Bialystok.
The band's second album Longing For Home is filled with eight extremely
moody and atmospheric songs rotating in the regions of Nosound or (sometimes)
Radiohead. There is no question of strong riffs or strong guitar playing.
Here, the climate nostalgic and rotates through post rock spaces. Nobody is
in a hurry here, the music seeps from the speakers, spilling around the room
and putting in a blissful, relaxing mood. OK, the band sometimes speeds up a
bit and is more dynamic ( I Will Never ) but in this case there is no way
to use this song instead of morning coffee!
Starsabout is another example of how many good bands are somewhere
underground, bands that a group of the hottest fans know about! Remember this
name worth it! This is a group that has potential and is worth giving them
a chance!
Translated from Polish: https://www.rockarea.pl/recenzje/starsabout-2017-longing-for-home
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Post-rock
is a subgenre of experimental rock
characterized by the exploration of textures and
timbres as well as non-rock styles, often with minimal or
no vocals, placing less emphasis on conventional song structures
or riffs than on atmosphere for musically evocative purposes.
Post-rock artists can often combine rock instrumentation
and rock stylings with electronics and digital
production as a means of enabling the
exploration of textures, timbres
and different
styles.
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