Starsailor
Love Is Here
[Capitol; 2002]
Rating: 5.7
You've got your daddy's eyes. And your daddy was an alcoholic. I've got
something in my throat. I need to be alone, when I suffer. So wipe the makeup
from your face, tie your hair and gently fall from grace. Give me a call; when
you're so sensitive, it's a long way to fall. You fell from my view. Son, you've
got a way to fall. Let me stay while they all fall to the ground. There's an
outlaw on the highway-- and she's falling. And she's falling.
If it sounds like I've stumbled onto someone's LiveJournal account, it's because
James Walsh's lyrics read like a diary. And believe me, dear reader, when I tell
you that each of the sentences above is from one of his songs. Of the eleven
tracks on Love Is Here, Starsailor's debut album, more than half mention
the world "fall" in some tense. Strange, too, because in interviews, Walsh has
mentioned that the album title was chosen for its positivity, in the light of the
cynicism they feel in the world around them. Yet, there's no doubt that
Starsailor's Q-mag accolades and their trip up the charts has been
influenced by Coldplay, Travis and those other melancholy radiorock bands from
their native England.
Walsh's voice, for his part, makes and breaks the band. His wavering baritone
doesn't sound much like a twenty-year-old, though it does bear an uncanny
similarity at times to both Live's Ed Kowalcyzk and David Gray. But his
bandmates play foil to his ambition with the simplicity of their arrangements;
James Stelfox's bass and Ben Byrne's drums create a vaguely soulful backbeat,
and Barry Westhead's keyboards add ornamentation, swelling during the inevitably
overblown climax of each song. Producer Steve Osbourne should probably get
credit as the fifth bandmember; his work with the Happy Mondays to Curve to Paul
Oakenfold has given him the experience to craft a truly special sound here, lush
and yet conveying an acoustic atmosphere.
If only Walsh & Co. knew such subtlety. The energy and emotion in these ballads
comes across a hell of a lot more sincere than the Matchbox Twenties of the world,
but Starsailor err so far on the opposite end that you're beaten about the ears.
On the afore-referenced "Alcoholic," Walsh whines, "Don't you know you've got your
daddy's eyes/ your daddy was an alcoholic/ But your mother kept it all inside/ And
she threw it all away." The sharp piano chords mix with his voice like a long-lost
Journey tear-jerker, and you know you can expect the entrance of the drums just
as the second verse begins. And Walsh's delivery, sounding so deliberate and
forced, doesn't do the track any favors.
"Tie Up My Hands," the opener, plods forward with soft bass and softer bass drum,
and it's a nice enough lure. But Walsh adopts this nursery-rhyme vocal hook:
"Take the disaffected life/ Men who ran the company ran your life/ You could have
been his wife." He wants to be the tragic hero so bad, and the chorus blazes with
dramatic guitarwork while he reels off: "I wanna hold you but my hands are tied/ I
wanna stay here but I've been denied!" He is pretty hunky, I have to admit, but
Bono's ego stole the same earnest rockstar pose long ago and forever doomed his
followers to imitation. Plus, you really can't forgive lyrics like, "She just
wept/ Like I could not ignore/ How can I act/ When my heart's on the floor?" If
Walsh didn't steal the scene so much, you might notice the other musicians'
contributions more often. The constant acoustic strum and piano progressions on
"Poor Misguided Fool" near Tindersticks territory, and in the middle of "Talk Her
Down," the guys bust into this beautiful, churning wreck of a breakdown, keyboards
swirling and cymbals crashing.
Love Is Here isn't bad, and its prospect for radio play is far more
appealing than, say, Train. The four just don't have the depth of their admitted
influences-- Neil Young, Van Morrison and Tim Buckley (the band is named after one
of his albums)-- though they have much room for growth. Most of the songs sound
too similar: a brooding verse matched by a bombastic chorus, and Walsh's "fall"
imagery doesn't seem so much conceptual as it does repetitive. Occasionally, as
on the closer "Coming Down," Walsh hushes his voice into intimacy as he asks,
"Were you always coming down?" But usually it's the most blatant of dashboard
confessionals: "Daddy, I've got nothing left/ My life is good/ My love's a mess."
People get onto indie rock for being inaccessible, but I'll take Pavement's
"latent causes, sterile gauzes and the bedside morale" any day over Starsailor's
"there's a hole inside my boat, and I need to stay afloat, for the summer."
Maybe Starsailor will hit it big here in the post-September-11th U.S., as they
did in the U.K.; they've got that whiny doleful sensitivity that appeals to the
masses. But I don't get the cathartic release they're aiming for. Instead, I
just feel like falling.
-Christopher Dare, January 22nd, 2002