Usually I try to compare an album to the artist in question’s previous works or to musicians who have mined similar territory in the past. Starflyer 59’s new one actually strikes me as a halfway point between two other albums that came out this year, Irving’s Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flowers and Starlight Mint’s Drowaton. It’s not as new wavey pop as Irving’s effort nor does it have the artsy weirdness of the Mint’s latest. But My Island’s brooding alterna-rock does have a similar, albeit more straightforward, tone to both of those albums. With crisp drumming, meat and potato bass lines, restrained rock guitar, and detached vocals, one-man band Jason Martin manages to paint a foreboding sheen over his palatable sound, much like those other bands.
As per my usual modus operandi for reviews, I played My Island during my weekly commute as well as a few times in the evenings. From the start I thought favorably of it, as in, “Yeah, this sounds good!” But even with all of those repeated listens I was having trouble recalling individual songs when it was not playing. I think at least part of the reason for this is that all of the songs have the same midtempo drive to them, causing everything to kind of blur together in retrospect. Finally, after about ten listens (it’s only about a half an hour long) things started to click and I was able to anticipate parts of songs while the album played and could recreate the sounds in my head when it was over.
Not to give the impression that it’s a bland album. My Island is actually very good and I have no qualms about recommending it. Besides, there’s no way I could have listened to it even half as many times if it sucked. Life’s too short and I’ve got an almost sickening amount of musical alternatives to devote my time to. This one just took a while for its subtle hooks to dig in.
Mixtape tracks- Nice Guy, Mic the Mic
Freebies- No downloads but you can stream “Nice Guy” and “I Win” at MySpace.