There's still a lot we don't know about stars, but we do know that, because of differences in mass, angular momentum and binary relationships, not every star dies in the same way. Some explode as supernovas, others cool down forever. Still others collapse into black holes, those a bottomless pits hidden by event horizons. As any fifth grade science teacher will tell you, anything that crosses an event horizon disappears, seemingly crushed out of existence without a trace.

Maybe Crushed Stars were referring to famous people when they chose their bandname-- as in, Laura Linney was crushed when she didn't receive the Oscar for Best Actress. But that would make Crushed Stars a pretty vapid bandname, huh? So, let's assume they're actually referring to the original stars-- those self-luminous bodies of gas sprinkled throughout the universe. Because, if nothing else, it makes my job of describing Self Navigation a little easier. Thank you for your cooperation.

Crushed Stars is comprised of multi-instrumentalist frontman Todd Gautreau (of Sonogram) and Centro-Matic drummer Matt Pence. And, yes, they write songs that seem to have experienced brilliance in some previous state-- like post-rock stripped of its ambitious musicianship and accompanied by exhausted vocals. The music is somewhat luminous, but its pace is that of a dying star; it's not so much languid as patiently fading, and accepting that it will continue to do so for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. And yet, paradoxically, this music is celestial only in the sense that it's good for stargazing.

Take "Letters to Munich," for instance, which is based around Gautreau's hazy voice, two-drum percussion, slow, rhythmic strumming, and a soft electric guitar rolling over the same seven notes or so. Throughout the track, other instruments enter and exit with equal subtlety: mellow trumpets, a keyboard-generated flute, and a droning trombone. Archer Prewitt is the obvious reference point-- and thus, by extension, so is Burt Bacharach. Gautreau even sounds like Prewitt and covers similar subjects, albeit with more awkwardness: "You were still growing into your frame/ I was still wondering how you pronounced your name."

Most of the songs here fit the blueprint above. Sometimes the guitar gets a bit livelier ("Gordon"; "Afterwards"), or the horns and flutes more prevalent ("Tow Truck" and "Presently Scattered," respectively), but these songs all subscribe to the aforementioned pace and the same reflective, sentimental lyrics. There are, however, a few anomalies. With its bouncy strumming and caterwauling drums, "Exit Wound" is the album's only bona fide pop song, and it exhibits Gautreau's high notes.

While "Exit Wound" provides a welcome boost, the three instrumentals, unhampered by vocal structure, flesh out the Crushed Stars' sound. "Asleep on a Bus Near Lowell" is perhaps the least interesting, although its overlapping guitars befit the title. "Outside the Stars are Falling" is even simpler: a spare piano, a guitar ascending and descending a three-note scale, and extraterrestrial humming comprise the majority of the track. But, coupled with the ambient movements of its final quarter, the stunning result is enough to make you wish it were night all day long. "Walkabout," meanwhile, provides low keyboards and a deep, shifty bass to invoke the spirit of a New Adventures-era REM instrumental.

The album's lyrics suggest a dual meaning to the Crushed Stars' name. In "Liza in Silver" alone, there are both of the following lines: "She looks just like her mother/ She looks just like a film star"; "I hold her hand in Sunday clothes/ We count the stars to tell the time." In mood, Self Navigation is much more like an event horizon than Event Horizon, the 1997 one-star sci-fi film starring crushed stars Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill. But it's hard to say whether this music disappears before your eyes, like the careers of Fishburne and Neill, or if it makes you disappear like that inexplicable celestial phenomenon.

-Ryan Kearney