Starling Electric was recharged into live performances about one year ago.

It was Autumn 2011 and it was essentially the five-year anniversary of the Ann Arbor art-pop quartet’s independent release of Clouded Staircase (…a work that, in just a few more lines, I’m going to exclamatorily expound to be a masterpiece…)

Funny though, come Autumn 2013, we can also mark a secondary five-year anniversary for that same album, if we count recognition of Bar None Records’ giving Staircase a proper big-label presentation…

…but by that time, we may be too busy marking the occasion of the first new Starling Electric album in…wait, how many years?

Listen: Starling Electric – “Camp-fire”

Clouded Staircase is, I’d say, just about a masterpiece. I think so. It’s hung around like this work of art, installed upon the walls the Arbor/Ypsi music scene’s corridors and slowly opened up to us, rendering subtler and sweeter intricacies to us slowly and dazzlingly like unfurled pedals of a blooming orchid.

Now, I’m not sure if my metaphor should make it more of a fresco or a flower, but, whatever works; regardless, I’m still having myself quite a reverent/nostalgic morning, here, as I play back a few tunes from this drifty swoon-laden suite of Brit-pop-smitten janglers and cricket-thrummed leaf-shuffled autumnal lullabies.

What a fitting listen, indeed, for the transition of seasons, on into Autumn; this daring and dynamic …and almost disorienting… swirl down the darkly effervescent seas of pastoral pop, cresting and crashing up against the daunting shores of scholarly, sense-stretching, meticulous-melody-wrought musicality.

Staircase felt dreamy if only in the sense that you weren’t sure if you were in the 90’s or the 60’s; it shone exemplary of the heartening aspects of the seminal “indie” singer/songwriter, the dayjob-blue-collar-busker type with its recording/early-tracking charmed by settings of bedrooms, basements and bathrooms and it’s humbled self-starter unveiling bartered out of the band’s back seat or car trunk. (Until Bar None came along – and afterwards tours and commingling with lo-fi heroes like Guided By Voices).

But back to that sweet, spiraling Staircase…

Once you dug through it, creeping naïve, nervous and mesmerized like some lucky kid who snuck into an eerie manor at the edge of town, marveling at its adornments of faded velvet curtains, chandeliers and gaping fireplaces, it struck this certain mystical chord, almost hauntingly cinematic even, in its whimsical, wispy evocations and keen sense for atmosphere.

Eighteen tracks unfold, a kaleidoscope of AM Pop, neo-paisley psychedelic, fuzz-crunched-space-rock, dolled-up piano-balladry, stripped down acoustic daydream-weavers…

A montage.

The album’s essentially a montage. A blur-together, etherea-smear of rock-esque, pop-esque, weird-warbly-folk stuff. And, essentially, I think it’s held up quite well.

Let’s call it a masterpiece.

But then, what will they do next?

And when?

No solid word readers. Suffice it to say that the group, (led on, still, by originals: Caleb Dillon, Christian Anderson and John Fossum and bolstered now by Lightning Love’s guitar/drum duo Ben Collins and Aaron Diehl), has been back in the studios (Big Sky) throughout the late summer.

Something’s blooming in this season of wilt and decay and one hopes it might be unveiled come winter (…or perhaps spring?)

In the meantime:

The Satin Peaches reunite (sort-of) for a Thanksgiving-time show and they’ve invited Starling Electric along to perform/party-on: Starling Electric
also: The Handgrenades / Lovechild

11/21/12 – The Magic Stick – Detroit (4120 Woodward / majesticdetroit.com)

Stay tuned.

Info:
http://starlingelectric.tumblr.com/

Further reading:
http://www.theboysthemselves.com/