Starflyer 59 -- Old

9/10

May 20, 2003. A glorious Tuesday afternoon. Finals are a week done. Grades have come in and I did fine. I'm officially a college senior. I just got off at my student worker job at LSU's Accounting Services, and I'm driving to FYE. Tuesday is the day new CD's are released, and saying "Today is a good one" is an understatement. FYE on College Drive has promised they'll have a copy of both Deftones Self-titled album and Starflyer 59's Old waiting for me. A new Deftones and new Starflyer 59 album on the same day? How can life be this good?
I listen to the new Deftones first, and while I end up listening to it about 1000 times that darkly weird and magical summer, it turns out that the Starflyer album is the better of the two. I listened to Old 1000 times that summer, too. I listened to a lot of music that summer, but I talked about that time in life in a review already. I will go ahead and post my old Zune playlist from that summer at the end of this review, if I can find it before it's time to publish. To just give you a picture of my life then, I remember naming the playlist "Isolated Bathtub." Nice!
Starflyer 59's Old is set in what I like to think of as Starflyer 59's golden age, which kicked off with 2000's Easy Come Easy Go. While that album is just a compilation of past work, it truly reveals the scope of Jason Marin's genius, particularly in an attached collection of B-sides. Then came 2001's Leave Here a Stranger, an album of such mystic brilliance, I think aliens hacked the Nicsperiment and wrote the review published here for it last week because I don't even remember typing it. Brilliance draws brilliance, and Martin's talent buglight zapped in multi-instrumentalist/noise-maker, Richard Swift, and drummer/multi-instrumentalist, Frank Lenz. The now unfortunately deceased Swift went on to play for that band that changed Natalie Portman and Zach Braff's lives the next year, The Shins, along with the Black Keys, and...just about every other touring rock band that got any press in the 20th century up until the time of his death in 2018. Lenz, no slouch himself, brings a different, dynamic feel to the kit. I nearly said that he brings more talent to the kit to any other previous Starflyer drummer, but I don't want to short-shrift the other players. Swift and Lenz both came into the band as burgeoning singer-songwriters, as well.
With these two on board, and bassist, Jeff Cloud, coming into his own as a rock musician, Martin finally seems to have all of the balls on his side of the court. Of course, fame, fortune, and the attention of the majority of the press alluded him here once again, but as Martin'd already written and recorded a work of genius that was completely ignored just two years before Old, the man was already used to having his brilliance passed over.
Still, there's a sense of excitement here, like the band are near to something bigger, with Martin taking the more interesting arrangements and sophisticated songwriting sensibilities from Leave Here a Stranger, and stripping away the walls of soft billowing noise. That more full production is replaced with a clear, but more aggressive sound. While this music never even sniffs the metal-tinged mid-90's work of Martin's past, it's more rock-oriented than any Starflyer 59 since 1997's Americana. Martin's voice has also grown even deeper and more world weary, giving a delightful edge and wink to the album's title.
Indeed, if one has never thought of Starflyer 59's music as "fun" before, the moment Swift or Lenz, or perhaps both let out a high-pitched, parroting background vocal of Martin's "just when you realize!" on the fast-paced, rocking opener, "Underneath," you've got to at least feel it. Lenz rips drums rolls left and right, Martin's guitar shifts back and forth between bouncy and rocking, Lenz produces sci-fi and goofy/spooky keyboard chorales, and Cloud pulls the whole ramshackle thing down the tracks with his steady bassline. The song rocks with a distinct attitude Martin's never quite emanated before. When track two, "Major Awards,"Martin's savage lament about "music sheriff's" and their "warrants" that no one cares about, is able to bring the tempo down, yet be just as fun, it's already apparent we've got a winning album on our hands.
Starflyer are able to keep this fun and edgy momentum going for most of Old's duration. There's a slight lag around the title-track ballad that just barely knocks Old out of "perfect album" territory (and beneath Leave Here a Stranger...weird, as that Deftones album suffers next to its predecessor, as well), but overall, this is still peak golden age Starflyer, being produced by the same guy (Aaron Sprinkle) who put out Anberlin's debut album just two weeks earlier.
So Starflyer never made it to the big leagues of popular consciousness. Martin was never able to quit his day job and keep top-tier talent around so that he could keep putting out albums of this caliber. At least he was able to pull off this miraculous run in the first place, and add even more goodness to a musical summer already full of it. He was able to get on the new release shelf at FYE right next to Deftones for one Tuesday in May of 2003. What a day.
I found that playlist!



2003 Tooth & Nail Records
1. Underneath 4:35
2. Major Awards 2:53
3. Loved Ones 3:03
4. Passengers 3:05
5. The Lights On 3:07
6. New Wife, New Life 3:35
7. Old 5:22
8. A Kissing Song 2:54
9. Unbelievers 5:31
10. First Heart Attack 4:57