Description
Leave Here a Stranger is the sixth full-length album by the American indie rock band Starflyer 59, released on Tooth & Nail Records in May 2001. The album was recorded by Andy Prickett with Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos fame producing. Mixed by Chris Colbert. (The album was recorded and mixed in mono.) Starflyer 59 features Jason Martin on vocals and guitar, Josh Dooley of Map on keyboards, and a rhythm section consisting of Jeff Cloud of Joy Electric fame on bass and Joseph Esquibel on drums.
Leave Here a Stranger was included among Los Angeles Times‘ Top 10 Albums of 2001. According to All Music Guide the album is “an atmospheric collection of beautifully languid melodies and lyrics that repeatedly use music as a metaphor for life. Mood, not variety, is the name of the game here, and the album plays like one long song, but for the right moment, Leave Here a Stranger is perfect.”
Leave Here a Stranger was followed by the five-track CD-EP Can’t Stop Eating , released in September 2002, as well as the sophomore album by Jason Martin’s side project Bon Voyage entitled The Right Amount, released in October the same year.
Some albums are great albums, full of wonderful songs. Some albums reek to the high heavens. A very select few albums are works of art. Although it may sound pretentious, Leave Here A Stranger by Starflyer 59 is definitely in the latter category. From the very first spin, something about the flow, the cohesiveness of the songs and how they interact with each other, makes you realize that SF59 had high aspirations for this album and that they hit their mark perfectly. While listening to this disc I am reminded at times of the landmark OK Computer, of early The Cure and Pet Sounds, lofty sources of inspiration indeed.
In a conscious effort to strip down their sound, SF59 recorded in glorious mono, forcing themselves to distill their vision into a potent concentrate. Much like Pet Sounds, there is an amazing breadth of instrumentation, including harps, saxophones, strings, timpani and more. The fact that such lush orchestrations do not cloud the songs is a tribute to all involved. As with past SF59 efforts, there is a great bit of creative use of noise and heavily reverbed guitar alongside Jason Martin’s trademark wispy vocals, not unlike those of Radiohead’s Thom York. The songs are low-key and atmospheric, yet filled with haunting melodies and arrangements.
For lyrical inspiration, the band looked to their immediate world. The opening track, «All My Friends Who Play Guitar», cascades a wash of sound like the waves on a beach as Martin sings about a life spent on the road. The chorus of «Can You Play Drums?» has Martin lamenting that “I already know what we’re gonna play” and in “Things Like This Help Me” he “stays up late (to) fix all the sounds.” For this musical brew, all influences are fair game, including The Smiths («Give Up the War») and Roy Orbison («Night Music»), although like the best cooks, the ingredients are combined to create a completely new dish with only hints of the original sources. My favorite is «I Like Your Photographs», a mesmerizing epic of a song whose topic still eludes me. The six minutes of this song are a well-written novel with chapters that flow effortlessly into each other. This beautifully lonely indie-pop masterpiece will appeal to fans of Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian and The Smiths and is sure to send shivers of delight down your wicked spine. [Jason Hoffman, WhatzUp, 2001]
In late ‘65 Brian Wilson heard The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and was immediately inspired to create an album that would either match or surpass it. So came Pet Sounds in ‘66, an album that – with its numerous layered vocal and instrument tracks, melodic bass lines, and unconventional and orchestral arrangements – reached the height of composition and production in its day, and would later influence The Beatles in the making of Sgt. Pepper’s, another landmark album.
While the quest for true originality is more or less pretentious and futile, what with rock ‘n’ roll having been with us now for well over half a century, the “nuclear arms race” between bands and musicians is more or less a thing of the past. It’s no longer about making archetypical records – anyone with sense will admit that all music is derivative. Originality, in our day, consists in successfully putting a fresh spin on what originated with one’s predecessors and, in a few cases, what contemporaries have already done. That said, SF59’s new record, Leave Here a Stranger, deserves the term in the highest sense. Critics have been hailing it as another Pet Sounds for months. And it’s deserved.
Whereas Pet Sounds was about drifting out of one’s teenage years, love affairs gone awry, bouts with melancholy, and youthful hopefulness, LHAS is a concept album exploring front man Jason Martin’s apprehensions and weariness with making records and living a musician’s life. Which is something of an irony, considering it will undoubtedly be SF59’s most successful record of their seven-year career – this one could take them far.
Having long since forsaken a ‘shoegaze’ sonic, LHAS follows suit, with a finely wrought blend of influences like The Beach Boys, New Order, The Smiths, Joy Division, and, well, recycled SF59. The album opens with slight static and flows into «All My Friends Who Play Guitar», a dreamy song that accentuates Martin’s talent with melody, and brings to mind glimpses of tired, disheveled bands traveling all around America on buses and red eye flights, pondering and living the rock ‘n’ roll dream.
Terry Taylor’s production on LHAS is impeccable – the vocals are more up front and audible (Martin also gives his best vocal performances to date), the strings don’t come off as synthetic as they did at times on Everybody Makes Mistakes, and the drum mixing has come a long way since Gold – sonically LHAS is expansive.
Although it’s a completely consistent album (imagine what Everybody Makes Mistakes could have been, were it more purposeful, complex, and cohesive), other high points include the graceful downtrodden urgency on «Give Up the War», which is possibly the saddest song Martin’s written. «I Like Your Photographs», where Martin morosely sings “Everyone needs a place in the sun…” amidst airy background voices, low X-Files-esque whistle, brooding piano and strings, and tremolo heavy guitars, recalls the other side of the coin of The Beatles’ «Here Comes the Sun».
LHAS concludes with the spacey, sweepingly melodic «Your Company», a lush, atmospheric throwback to Americana, sailing out on a jam before slowly disseminating. If any listeners do leave here a stranger, they’ve only been alienated in the highest sense of the word. [Sarah Jones, HM Magazine]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/leave-here-a-stranger/724734510)
CD tracklist:
01. All My Friends Who Play Guitar – 5:21
02. Can You Play Drums? – 2:56
03. When I Learn To Sing – 3:25
04. Give Up The War – 4:49
05. Things Like This Help Me – 4:58
06. This I Don’t Need – 2:53
07. I Like Your Photographs – 6:21
08. …Moves On – 1:20
09. Night Music – 3:41
10. Your Company – 4:21
Note: Also released on 12-inch vinyl LP by ABC Group Documentation the same year.
Starflyer 59, Live at Cornerstone 2002
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.