Cooper Edens’ 1979 book is an illustrated children’s adventure about a dandyish, top-hatted cohort – the starcleaners – who attempt to restore the darkened night sky with nothing but soapy water and self-belief. It’s the kind of obscure IYKYK story that sticks with you deep into adulthood, all hand-drawn starscapes and galactic whimsy, and so it makes complete sense that the book’s Goodreads page alludes to a “ballet in the works.”
When you name your band, you don’t necessarily want people to dissect it at every opportunity. Sometimes you just pick a few words and crack on. But Starcleaner Reunion just so happened to pick the perfect name to evoke their music. The grooves on debut album are full of spacey retro-pop – the kind that looks outward to the stars and sees a smiling moon made of cheese.
The quartet formed post-pandemic, but their genesis was long before. They each grew up in the small town of Springfield, New Jersey, and, as the only four people of just over 10,000 to be on the weirdo-music mainline, grew close at early ages. With Stereolab, bossa nova, and jangle-pop in their ears, and big city dreams in their heads, they independently migrated to New York where they eventually settled and became the interstellar upstarts we know them as today.
Though it's only been three years since their debut single, sounds like the work of a band that has existed for all time. There are no first-time-album nerves here, just four friends working together to build a shared universe together on wax.
Each track shares a number of common sounds in service of shaping a Starcleaner Reunion galaxy. Synthesisers whirr and melodic basslines frolic as they orbit Jo Roman’s hypnotic vocals, while the guitar lines feel deliberately loose and patient; they have a real “Space Oddity” meander to them.
“Never Odd or Even” captures the band at their fizziest and most urgent. “I can see your voice,” Roman gleams atop backing vocals, while busy, buzzing synth lines and chiming bells transform “Docking In Oslo” from an indie-pop scuttler into a transportive psychedelic portal.
The band really come into their own, though, when the rocketship shifts gears downward. On the seven-minute interplanetary waltz “Headlamp Hiker”, they exercise a glacial patience and nuclear precision to make you feel like you’re really floating in a most peculiar way, while the light leaks and banjo pings of “Eating the Alphabet” are as wistful and blissed out as this kind of music can get.
Admittedly, Starcleaner Reunion are very much beholden to their influences here. A number of songs “could be Stereolab” if you wince, while Broadcast’s casts a long shadow throughout. But, overall, it doesn’t take away one bit from the joy and splendour of this delightfully enjoyable debut. Soundcraft and feeling is more important than innovation and ambition. The band aren’t shooting for the moon, but end up among the stars anyway.