Released: March 22
Reuniting with Embrace’s Rick McNamara, Stairailor look to the future on their first album in seven years, ‘Where The Wild Things Grow’.
Born in the wake of frontman James Walsh’s divorce and crafted over the course of a global pandemic, change is central to the core of the record, which delivers some of the band’s strongest work since their early 2000s albums.
The title song points to the group as they stand today, drawing on an array of influences from ‘70s rock while delivering the track with an ease and natural confidence that comes with more than two decades under their belts.
Opening number, the five-and-a-half-minute Into The Wild, proves the band are doing nothing by numbers this time around, while the single Heavyweight taps into the highs and lows of life in a band approaching its 25th anniversary next year.
Better Times stands out as another anthem from the set which, paired with more reflective tunes such as After The Rain and Hard Love, showcases the spectrum of the group’s musicality and their continuing desire to evolve and push their sound further.
The single, Dead On The Money – with its double-meaning title – is destined to become a singalong moment in their live shows having already proved to be a fan-favourite since its release..
Come closing number Hanging In The Balance, Walsh is at his most reflective, singing ‘If we hold on to tight we’ll suffocate it / If we give it too much space we’ll just erase it’ and opening up a world of emotions that have run through the band’s most recent recordings and helped lure longtime fans back into Starsailor’s musical universe.
Arriving on the back of the 20-year anniversary of their debut album, ‘Love Is Here’, Starsailor’s gaze has moved firmly from the past and onto the future – and while the lessons of days gone by may echo through their lyrics, they serve as pointers for living as the band steps into tomorrow with one of their best albums yet!
