{"id":17927,"date":"2019-12-17T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=17927"},"modified":"2019-12-17T11:45:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T16:45:32","slug":"album-review-daystar-the-complete-recordings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/17\/album-review-daystar-the-complete-recordings\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Daystar — The Complete Recordings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s always tricky choosing a band name. I once had a group called the Buzztones<\/a>; we played obscure ’60s garage-psych. But one day we discovered there was another Buzztones, and they were a Christian rock [sic] group. Ugh. So we changed our name to The Echoes of Tyme (side note: that name’s available now if you want it).<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, Google \u201cDaystar band\u201d and the first thing you find is another Christian group featuring someone with the surname Lamb. (No, really<\/i>.) But dig a bit deeper, because it’s worth the effort. There’s a Daystar from Portland Oregon, and they’re good. Led by songwriter Derek Phillips, the four-piece group makes a kind of folk-flavored rock that isn’t folk-rock.<\/p>\n

They’re not aping styles (as far too many powerpop acts, for example, tend to do) but Daystar does have a breezy sound that occasionally recalls Badfinger. I’m not thinking here of \u201cCome and Get It,\u201d but more of the deeper album cuts that showed the Welsh-British band’s nuance and sophistication. A track like \u201cA Lot to Love\u201d on Daystar’s The Complete Recordings<\/i> would have fit nicely on Badfinger’s self-titled Warner Brothers LP. And \u201cPeople Get Lonely\u201d evokes warm thoughts of No Dice<\/i> tracks.<\/p>\n

But I don’t want to make too much of any purported Badfinger similarities. Daystar really don’t aim to sound like anyone but themselves. It’s just that the timeless production values, and little things like mixing the close-harmony vocals and lead guitar parts right out front, tend to remind one of the way they used to do it.<\/p>\n

The Leslie-effected guitar on \u201cAll That You Know,\u201d \u201cSunny Golden Side\u201d and elsewhere conjures thoughts of Let it Be<\/i>-era Beatles, but again I’ll emphasize that there’s nothing explicitly retro about Daystar. Solid songs, uncluttered and appealing arrangements and an overall unpretentious vibe are the defining characteristics of The Complete Recordings<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The first side of the LP presents a suite of songs that fit together stylistically. It’s on the second side that Daystar opens up its approach to show what else the band can do. The band rarely rocks hard, but when it does \u2013 as on \u201cButtons and Brass\u201d \u2013 it does so credibly. But the laid-back, Neil Young-styled \u201cAngelina\u201d is more in line with what seems to the Daystar’s overall musical sensibility. The country-rock of \u201cBallad of Sister Sadie May\u201d works, too. And \u201cGet Yourself Away,\u201d a primarily instrumental number, ends with squalls of electric guitar and white noise. That leads into a Big Star Third<\/i>-styled album closer, the gentle \u201cFade Away, Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other than the welcome Mellotron flourishes that adorn \u201cWarped Reality,\u201d there isn’t really anything about this music that sticks a pin in any particular time. It’s certainly not \u201cmodern rock.\u201d Instead it’s midtempo, heartfelt music that was obviously made at a time in which the artists involved were committed to getting it right.<\/p>\n

A few words about the physical product are in order here. I have The Complete Recordings<\/i> on vinyl. Apaprently there’s a purple edition, but mine’s plain old black. No problem at all. The sleeve is sturdy, and inside there’s a lyric booklet, about the size of a 45 r.p.m. picture sleeve, with a card stock cover. That’s a nice touch that also hearkens back to the ’70s. And the ubiquitous download card is CD-sized, printed in color on one side, and set up to be a post card. That, too, is a nice touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always tricky choosing a band name. I once had a group called the Buzztones; we played obscure ’60s garage-psych. But one day we discovered there was another Buzztones, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65,73],"tags":[4066],"class_list":["post-17927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-daystar","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17927"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17978,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17927\/revisions\/17978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}