Review: Silver Starling - Silver Starling

For The Singing Lamb October 11, 2009.

I must begin my review of the debut album from Silver Starling by complaining about CD packaging companies. I do not know when this trend of sticking a disc in a sleeve inside another sleeve tucked into the side of the overall package, which is then wrapped in air-tight plastic began. But I do not enjoy having to search for the disc – it is impossible to look dignified when you are holding a case upside down and shaking it, hoping the CD will drop to the floor. And it only sets the potential listener up for a great amount of disappointment when, as with this particular disc, you feel that the music was not worth the struggle.

This particular impossible-to-open disc, the self-titled Silver Starling album, was inspired largely by the fight of a man (a close friend of many of the group members) against eventually fatal pancreatic cancer. And while this five-piece band from Montreal captures the sense of mourning and wistful affection very well, they failed to leave out an equal sense of inevitable gloom and depression that weighs down most of their overly similar tracks. In other words, the listener was subjected to the nausea of chemo, as well as the fond remembrance of a departed friend.

Maybe it’s just birthing pains for the group, which is composed solely of excellent musicians and several familiar faces – namely Marcus Paquin, who fronts the group, and his wife Marika Anthony-Shaw, who split her time working with Silver Starling and playing viola with Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible tour. Other members include Liam O’Neil, Gab Lambert and Peter X, all of whom are well known in the world of vaguely indie music.

Listening to the songs, you can certainly hear references to that Arcade Fire-y sound. Happiness is represented by fifth intervals on the glockenspiel, and melancholy by husky voices and hushed drums. Overall, it’s a nice sound – but not one that fans of Stars, Arcade Fire, or The New Pornographers will find particularly groundbreaking.

The other problem with this album, besides predictability in style, is the inability to determine when one song stops and another one begins. Seriously. On my first listen to this album, I labored under the impression that I was listening to one fifteen minute song, one that would likely continue until the end of the disc. It wasn’t until I got up and checked the player that I realized I was five songs in, and hadn’t been surprised, delighted, or hooked in at all yet.

Something of a hook appears around the middle of the album (where, actually, I usually find my favourite songs will end up). The tracks “Ghosts” provided the one, only, singular, solitary song that was not out to depress me, and its jauntiness was a refreshing change. Following on its heels was “Love and a Broken Heart”, and these two songs combined represented to me the only tracks that offered any kind of optimism and warmth.

All things considered, this was not the best album I have listened to in a long time. However, it might be interesting to watch what happens to this group, as they (hopefully) continue to produce albums. It may be that this group of talented musicians just hasn’t found their own sound yet – this is something that comes with time. Or, perhaps, on their next album, they should consider writing about butterflies and rainbows instead of death and despair.