On the Outside

by

Starsailor

Edit

Starsailor broke out in England and had massive success earlier this decade right around the same time as another melodic band from that country, Coldplay. But unlike Chris Martin and the boys, Starsailor's debut single stateside, Good Souls, failed to get as much play as Yellow and their follow up Silence Is Easy wise widely ignored here two years ago as another similar band Keane gain notoriety with Somewhere Only We Know. Now Starsailor is back to see if the third time is truly the charm with the release of On the Outside.

On the new album the band takes a decided harder sound, but instead of the crunching guitars or piano that Coldplay in known for, Starsailor instead assaults you with a wall of noise. Not coincidentally the inventor of the Wall of Sound, Phil Spector helmed their previous two albums, but wasn't around for this one. Instead the disk was produced by Rob Schnaph who has worked with the like of Beck and Elliot Smith. The one-two punch of In the Crossfire and Counterfeit Life come out you full force while lead singer James Welsh is found screaming at times which only builds the effect even more and isn't afraid to reach for notes throughout the album. The emotion in the music and the singing never lets down on the whole album which could be attributed to the record being record live in the studio.

But it's not all a melodic wall of noise, I Don't Know is a straight ahead rocker filtered through American blues that is reminiscent to mid-eighties U2. Get out While You Can goes from a haunting acoustic guitar and piano verse to a more melodic chorus and back again. Jeremiah is a slow moving acoustic song with a lyric, "And every time I see the sun go down I think of you," that can easily get stick in your head and is a great way to cap off the album (bonus track excluded). Speaking of the bonus track, Empty Streets, it is the closest song on the album that has the same melodic feel as previous works such as Good Souls.

There is anger in the lyrics that coincide with the harder sound whether it's love, "See that poor girl with the glint in her eye, she could turn you that way" (I Don't Know), political, "I don't see myself when I look at the flag. Thank God for that" (In the Crossfire), globalization, "A war for corporate glory re-told as a fairy story" (Counterfeit Life), and life itself, "Tired of living in this modern land, too many ideals to meet with its demands" (Faith Love Hope). On the Outside may be a step backwards in trying to get commercial success stateside, but it is a step in making better music.

...but coming from Starsailor, I was expecting something a little more complex. Not that I don't like "On The Outside," but for all intensive purposes this is straight-ahead, 4:4, three-chord rock album with some catchy hooks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but after "Silence..." I was expecting something a little more complex, artistically speaking. This album just kinda....fills the void. It's a shame because I really like this band, but I think they're probably too constricted by their label right now to try anything really daring, thus we're given an album of pop songs. I'm really banking on something groundbreaking in a year or two, and I'll continue to follow this band until then.

There are a couple other reasons I gave this a 3 instead of a 4:

1) I bought the "import" version of this album which originated in Argentina, because where I live (Portland, Oregon, USA) Starsailor are all but unknown and the album has not been released here (yet?). Sadly, the copyright protection made it rather difficult for me to copy the album to my Rio, which is *perfectly legal.* Even worse, when you toss this CD into your computer's CD-rom, a 3rd party audio player launches and plays the album at radio quality. None of my standard audio players could decipher the copyright protection, so I was forced to listen to the album in raspy 128-bit mp3 quality. The audio player sucks, it's a piece of crap.

2) The vast majority of the songs on this album stick to the same 4-5 chords (I play guitar. Trust me, I know). This isn't a terrible thing, but it really slows down the progression of the album to the point where you wonder, "Did I just hear this song....oh no wait, this is a new song, but with the *exact* same sound."

Again, this is a decent album. I rarely give 5 stars, so a 3 star rating from me means "buy it," but don't expect the album to inspire you/lower your taxes/save money on car insurance. It's worth the XX dollars you pay for it!