Last month, STARSAILOR announced their return with “Where The Wild Things Grow”, the title track of their first album in six years, produced by Rick McNamara and set for release on 22nd March 2024. Today, they announce a March / April 2024 Tour and share “Heavyweight.”
Showcasing some extraordinary prog-infused guitar histrionics, “Heavyweight” is a sure-fire single and a straight-up love song seen through the lens of boxing – punch drunk love! Heavyweight means – according to Walsh – “this isn’t a fleeting thing, and we’re in it for the long run, the ups and downs, and it will feel heavy sometimes.”
Formed in and around Wigan at the start of the millennium and featuring James Walsh (guitar, vocals), James Stelfox (bass), Barry Westhead (keyboards) and Ben Byrne (drums), Starsailor have released five albums to date, including Love Is Here in 2001, Silence Is Easy in 2003, On The Outside in 2005, All The Plans in 2009 and All This Life in 2017. A greatest hits compilation entitled Good Souls: The Greatest Hits surfaced in 2015, featuring all ten of their UK Top Forty singles to date, including their biggest hit, “Silence Is Easy”, which reached No.9 in 2003.
On the new album, Starsailor canter through a record of astonishing complexity: “Dead On The Money” – “a song about being flat broke but full of hope, although I like the fact it means exactly right too. Like knowing deep down you’re on the right track even though recovery is slow” – which kicks things off, will remind you of Chameleons, Supergrass, and I Threw A Brick Through A Window-era U2; the folk-tinged “Flowers” (featuring some stunning lap steel from Spritualized’s Tony ‘Doggen’ Foster) was inspired by a documentary about a flower seller in Aleppo who “just kept setting up his stall, despite the bombs going off around him, dedicated to providing a tiny haven of beauty during such a devastating time”; “Enough (I Should Be Home By Now)” has a wonderful, rolling, mid-Atlantic quality reminiscent of the Eagles’ finer moments; and “After The Rain” – (featuring slide guitar from the aforementioned Foster, “the most joyous song to put together, just a lovely process” – was inspired by The Band, Crosby Stills and Nash, and the Laurel Canyon scene.
Themes of love and hope to pop up all over the record: on “Hard Love”, Walsh muses on the simplicity of single life when compared to the complications and range of emotions of a relationship – spoiler alert, he comes down on the side of the relationship, if it’s with the right person – whilst “Hanging In The Balance” is about that delicate time, “the early stages of a relationship when it’s starting to get real and you’re on the precipice between it becoming something life-changing or you both going your separate ways.”
Best of all is “Where The Wild Things Grow Itself”, which was released last month. “I wrote it in my old flat at night,” says Walsh which has that slightly uneasy, otherworldliness reminiscent of those early Bowie or Pink Floyd recordings. “I could hear the pipes creaking. I was thinking of Maurice Sendak and Stanley Donwood’s Radiohead art. There’s an early Ed Harcourt song called ‘Beneath The Heart Of Darkness’ that’s an influence too. The brooding otherworldly darkness.”
Where The Wild Things Grow – the album – features additional guitar work by Tony “Doggen” Foster from Rick McNamara and Travis’s Andy Dunlop, as well as backing vocals by Lucy Joules (Sam Smith). Rick, himself, who produced the album, is now unofficially ‘the fifth Starsailor’, or, as Walsh puts it, “another creative in the room who really cares about the songs and pushes us to our limits.”
Over the past two decades, Starsailor have been compared to everyone from Neil Young and Van Morrison to Wigan compatriots, The Verve – Walsh cites the latter’s homecoming show in front of 33,000 people at Haigh Hall on 24th May 1998 as a revelatory experience – although, concurrently, perhaps we should add Tim and Jeff Buckley, as well as Arcade Fire to that increasingly debatable list. Whatever your pronouncements on the matter, one thing’s for sure: Where The Wild Things Grow bears up to candid analysis, repeat listens, proving it to reveal layer upon layer of casual observations and quiet reflections on life being loved and love being lived. It’s also an album that has no right to be as good as it is – and yet here it is.
LIVE DATES
SILENCE IS EASY 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
15th Nov The Hague – Paard (Low Tickets) Netherlands
16th Nov Arnhem – Luxor Live (Sold Out) Netherlands
18th Nov Antwerp – De Roma (Sold Out) Belgium
19th Nov Paris – La Maroquinerie (Sold Out) France
24th Nov Norwich, The Waterfront (Low Tickets) UK
25th Nov Nottingham, Rescue Rooms (Sold Out) UK
26th Nov Glasgow, SWG3 TV Studio (Low Tickets) UK
27th Nov Newcastle, Boiler Shop UK
28th Nov Wolverhampton, The Wulfrun at The Halls UK
30th Nov Sheffield, The Foundry UK
1st Dec Manchester, O2 Ritz (Sold Out) UK
2nd Dec London, Electric Ballroom (Sold Out) UK
3rd Dec Southampton, The Brook (Sold Out) UK
WHERE THE WILD THINGS GROW TOUR DATES
22nd Mar Warrington – Parr Hall UK
3rd Apr Birmingham – O2 Institute UK
4th Apr Bristol – O2 Academy UK
5th Apr Edinburgh – Queen’s Hall UK
6th Apr Sunderland – The Fire Station UK
8th Apr Leeds – Brudenell Presents UK
9th Apr Brighton – Concorde 2 UK
11th Apr Amsterdam – AmMelkweg OZ Netherlands
12th Apr Brussels – La Madeleine Belgium
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