It’s the morning after a long night out, and the Stars Here are waking up with their heads swimming… it’s time to play. They set up, call a few friends over, and get to the day’s business: eleven songs. They play “Simply Saucer”, a riff-rocker that struts and staggers like a band on a bender. Next up’s “Cocaine Pants”, rolling like the whiskey shots still in their stomachs. They chime into “Coast of California”, an ode to the west pleaded over a shimmering classic rock melody. But slowly, the hangovers persist, the band slow down, and the acoustic guitars are un-cased. Patrick Finch begins to pick through the intro of “Albert St. Band” and starts to sing: “We’re getting long in the tooth / the city’s getting hot.” As the band roll through the hungover-country-optimism of “Being Stoned” and the Sadies-esque stomp of “Sinner’s Soul”, they let their friends add personal flourishes: a tambourine here, a little pedal steel guitar, maybe a duet…and as the day progresses, the Stars Here have an epiphany: “This is how a record should be made.” After funding, recording, releasing and touring in support of their debut full length Check the Wreckage, the Stars Here continued to hone the new material they had been live-testing on tour. As the process unfolded, Patrick Finch, Chris Gardner, Graeme Pautler, Paddy Townsend and Mark Imola found themselves less inclined to play the kind of rockers that had peppered Wreckage. “Big, fun, dumb rock n’ roll started to feel more dumb than fun,” recalls Finch. “We wanted to relax a bit, turn down, and let the songs speak for themselves”. They began to adopt a new aesthetic – a sonic sincerity based upon concentrating on the song rather than what can be done to the song. “It’s easy to get carried away with the possibilities of the Pro-Tools era, but all of these songs started with one voice and an acoustic guitar,” Finch explains. “The more stuff you pile on, the further you get from what made the song good in the first place.” Recorded exclusively by the band in their practice space, Fitzcarraldo, the band’s latest offering, is a record alive with the spirit of Crazy Horse, haunted by the ghost of Gram Parsons, and spiked with the attitude of the Hellacopters. In the spirit of the Band’s the Last Waltz they invited friends and fellow musicians, eleven in all, to contribute to the album. Bob Egan (Blue Rodeo, Wilco) provides an angelic pedal steel to “Being Stoned”, noted KW singer-songwriter Paul MacLeod sings back-up vocals on “Enemy” and “Listen for the Birds”, and Shelby Kerr (the Steven Elmo Murphy Band) sings on “Albert St. Band” in a duet recalling the glory days of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris’ collaborations. “It was a completely fulfilling experience,” Finch says of Fitzcarraldo’s guest stars. “They gave colour to the songs in ways we may never have thought of.” In Fitzcarraldo, the Stars Here have achieved a true testament to the power of honest sound, the sound of five people in a room playing songs inspired by youth, love, loss, and life; and it will forever be the mark by which the Stars Here measure their future endeavors. “I think that our approach to music will become less encumbered with unnecessary tinkering with each project,” predicts Finch. “The beginning of 2009 will probably reveal a new album, and it’s going to be the best thing we’ve ever done.” The songs for the next record are already written, waiting to be recorded, waiting to be imbued with the colour, the zeal, and the focus that the Stars Here bring to everything they do.
-Kevin O'Brien
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