Starsailor - All This Life album review

Starsailor – All This Life

Release date 1^st September 2017

This review was originally posted via Gig Junkies.

Some 16 years after their critically acclaimed debut release, ‘Love Is Here’, Starsailor return with their 5^th studio album ‘All This Life’. It’s also 8 years since previous studio release ‘All The Plans’. Prolific is not a word you’d associate with Starsailor.

2001’s platinum selling ‘Love Is Here’ reached Number Two in the UK album charts. In the same year they won the Brightest New Hope at the NME awards. Some might ask where did it go wrong for Starsailor. The simple answer is it didn’t. These long hiatuses lead to exemplary quality control. There is very little filler on a Starsailor album.

In ‘Break The Cycle’ James Walsh sings of “Running out of words to write”. I find this very hard to believe. It is Starsailor’s lyrics and Walsh’s unbelievably, achingly beautiful delivery that has always set the band apart.

There are songs on ‘All This Life’ that wouldn’t be out of place on any previous Starsailor album, that is not to say the band haven’t progressed. Opening track ‘Listen To Your Heart’ with its pounding drum intro and wailing guitar could be Biffy. Then the keyboards kick in and it’s The Killers. It’s not till we hear Walsh’s unmistakeable voice pleading as he sings the title that we know we’re listening to Starsailor and by that stage it couldn’t be any other band.

Starsailor have always delivered emotionally wrought lyrical masterpieces backed by some of the most haunting melodies. We still get that with tracks like ‘Blood’ and ‘Sunday Best’ but we get out and out pop with the title track and forays into funk with ‘Take A Little Time’ and ‘Caught In The Middle’. ‘Fallout’ harks back to big music epicness. It is Starsailor’s most complete album. It swells with the maturity of a band knowing they are (again) on the crest of a massive creative peak.

To pick a stand out track is tough but if I must it would be ‘FIA’. In a world of OMG, LOL, LMAO etc I was wracking my brains as to what FIA could mean. It was a genuine, and pleasant, shock when I heard Walsh’s unwavering ‘Nothing’s impossible when you say F*** It All’. It’s a beautiful, builder of a song, Barry Westheard’s echoing piano in particular taking us on a slow determined journey full of hope.

I first saw Starsailor as four nervous young lads supporting The Beautiful South right at the start of their career. They showed then that they had something special, if not a tad raw. I was lucky enough to catch them at The Isle Of Wight Festival this summer where they played to a rapturous packed out Big Top. They were magnificent. They head out on tour with ‘All This Life’ in October. Buy this album then go catch them live. You won’t regret it.

12^th Oct – Cambridge, Junction

13^th Oct – Norwich, Waterfront

14^th Oct – Bristol, Bierkeller

16^th Oct – Leeds, Beckett Students’ Union

17^th Oct – Birmingham, O2 Institute 2

18^th Oct – Sheffield, Leadmill

19^th Oct – Liverpool, Academy

21^st Oct – Newcastle, Boiler Shop

22^nd Oct – Glasgow, O2 ABC

24^th Oct – Manchester, O2 Ritz

25^th Oct – Brighton, Concorde 2

26^th Oct – London, KOKO