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First
things
first. A
question:
what's the
perfect
environment
to make an
album in?
Here are a
couple of
choices. No
1: You're a
new British
band, you've
been on the
covers of
the music
press dozens
of times in
the space of
a year, and
your first
album's just
sold more
than 1m
copies.
Pressure?
What
pressure?
(Well, quite
a bit,
actually.)
No 2: You're
a British
band, Keane,
Coldplay,
James Blunt
and
associated
warblers are
at the top
of the
charts, your
second album
went
platinum,
but the
media glare
is on other
groups now.
Do you
panic? Or do
you make the
record
you've
always
wanted to
make? |
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Starsailor have dealt with both these scenarios. They didn't much enjoy
the first
(when the
involvement
of a certain
legendary
record
producer
proved a
decidedly
mixed
blessing).
But they
absolutely
loved the
second. And
when you cue
up their
impassioned
new album,
'On the
Outside',
you'll see
why. Or
rather,
you'll hear
it. It's
there, in
the first
bars of
opener, 'In
the
Crossfire',
with Stel,
Barry and
Ben haring
out of the
traps, and
James
spitting out
a
quintessential
Starsailor
lyric: "I
don't see
myself when
I look in
the mirror;
I see who I
should be."
It's there,
too, on the
future live
favourites
'Counterfeit
Life' and
'In My
Blood', two
gospel-tinged
tracks that
complete a
devastating
opening
triptych. On
the
unmistakable,
colours-to-the-mast
'Faith Hope
Love'. On
the epic
'Keep Us
Together',
whose
backing
vocals are
destined to
be taken up
by live
audiences on
the band's
forthcoming
tour. And on
the
heartbreaking
closer
'Jeremiah',
a song
inspired by
the still
unexplained
death of the
British
student,
Jeremiah
Duggan, who
died fleeing
a far-right
conference
in Germany
that he'd
unwittingly
become
caught up
in.
Can a band in their mid-twenties be accurately described as veterans?
Perhaps not,
but
Starsailor,
first warmed
by the
publicity
spotlight
and then
scalded by
it, are,
whatever
their birth
certificates
might claim
to the
contrary,
old hands
now. There's
a depth to
their sound,
their
songwriting,
their
purpose,
which
attests to
the benefits
of stepping
out of the
limelight
and into a
less
hysterical
creative
environment.
And we're
the
beneficiaries
too.
Because,
necessary
and
intoxicating
though the
sudden
spurts of
hype are,
the proof is
in the
longevity,
rather than
those
fly-by-night,
15-minute
firework
careers that
flare
gloriously
above our
heads and
then
disperse and
disappear
into the
night sky.
The real
test, the
only one
that matters
in the long
run, comes
when the
circus has
moved on.
What
sustains a
band is what
happens in
the studio,
fine-tuning
a song,
eyeball-to-eyeball
over the
mixing desk,
or
full-throttle
and
high-decibel
onstage. If
that well
has run dry,
no amount of
wacky
re-mixes,
headline-grabbing
collaborations
or
greatest-hits
packages
will
disguise the
fact for
long. You're
as good as
your songs.
Starsailor know about songs, and so do their fans. Watching a sell-out
crowd sing
along,
word-perfect
to 'Fever',
'Alcoholic',
'Lullaby',
'Good
Souls'; to
'Silence is
Easy', 'Four
to the
Floor' and
'Music Was
Saved', is a
conflicting
experience.
It's an
impressive
back
catalogue,
no question.
But it's
also,
potentially,
a burden.
How, a band
might be
tempted to
ask
themselves,
do we
possibly
follow that?
When James, Stel, Barry and Ben reconvened after the bruising experience
of their
second
album,
'Silence is
Easy', they
knew what
they didn't
want to do.
And they
knew what
they needed
to avoid.
"It would,"
reflects
Stel, with
characteristic
bluntness,
"have been
easier to
self-implode
than to
carry on."
What's more,
with James
relocated to
Belfast, a
geographical
dislocation
could, if
their minds
had been
less
concentrated,
have become
a permanent
estrangement.
But human
beings are
perverse
creatures.
If anything,
the opposite
was the
case. "He
lived around
the corner
from me,"
laughs Stel,
reflecting
on their
days as
near-neighbours
outside
Manchester,
"and I never
saw him." In
fact,
James's
regular
commute from
Northern
Ireland
acted as the
spark that
reignited
the band's
fire. "We'd
get more
done in four
hours," he
says, "than
in all the
time I was
living in
the same
area."
Those to-a-deadline gatherings saw the band moving on from the
cap-off-the-bottle
catharsis of
the first
album, and
the
make-sense-of-it-all
upheavals of
the second,
and looking
at the world
around them,
as if, they
say now, for
the first
time. So
when they
flew to
California
to work with
the producer
Rob Schnapf
(Beck, The
Vines,
Elliott
Smith), they
came with a
new approach
to the
recording
process. Out
went the
ProTools, in
came
straight-to-tape.
Out, too,
went the
anxiety. The
sight of
palm trees
through the
studio
windows, and
of friends
relaxing
beneath
them, both
inspired the
band and
made them
get the hell
on with it.
Working with
an obsessive
producer and
engineer
meant that
it was often
some time
before they
made it
outside to
those trees.
But in the
hothouse
atmosphere
of the
studio, they
found
themselves
being pushed
harder and
further than
they ever
had been
before.
"Rob's
obsessive
about
guitars,"
says James.
"He'd be,
like, let's
get a sound
with a 1964
Gibson 335
through a
1962 Vox
AC30. And he
had all that
stuff
there." Stel,
meanwhile,
was finding
it less easy
to impress
Doug the
engineer
than he'd
expected. "I
must have
been in the
room six
hours,"
recalls Stel
of one
particularly
fraught
session.
"The sun was
shining
outside. And
I'm playing
this part
and
thinking,
yeah, got
it, what do
you reckon
Doug? And he
went, 'I
could play
better than
that', which
is when the
red mist
descended."
A pause.
"Mind you,
he was
right."
"With 'Silence is Easy'," James reflects, "we'd be recording the album
and reading
about
ourselves in
the paper or
seeing a
picture of
ourselves or
playing a
gig, all at
the same
time.
Whereas with
this one, it
was totally
focused,
totally
inspired."
Stel
interrupts,
as he is
wont to do.
"'Urgent' –
that's the
word for
this record.
Plus, we're
probably the
closest
we've ever
been as a
band."
Some bands get to their third album and have you wishing they'd quit
after the
first.
Others,
though, only
really come
to the boil
when they've
got the
brilliant
but
incoherent
debut album
and the
high-pressure,
written-on-the-road
follow-up
out of the
way. With
'On the
Outside',
Starsailor
prove
emphatically,
triumphantly,
that they
belong to
the latter
category.
Their
discography
may read:
'Love is
Here',
'Silence is
Easy', 'On
the
Outside'.
But these 11
new tracks,
and the
confidence
and verve
with which
they
dispatch
them, sound
like the
work of a
band
entering a
recording
studio for
the first
time. It's
as if some
invisible
force has
added a
thickening
agent to the
pot. The
Starsailor
you hear on
'On the
Outside' –
James's
vocals and
guitar-playing
more
authoritative
and
passionate
than they've
ever been;
Stel's
inspired,
endlessly
inventive
bass-playing
confirming
him as in
the very top
rank; Barry
anchoring
the new
sound with
propulsive,
euphoric
Hammond; Ben
powering the
band
forwards –
are four
people
reconnecting
themselves
and us with
what caused
all the
excitement
in the first
place
They've come through the highs and the lows, the limelight and the
shadows, the
self-belief
and the
doubt, to
produce
their finest
set of songs
to date.
Honest,
furious,
impassioned
and, like
the man
said,
urgent. Old
hands? More
like
first-timers. |
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