THE INDIFFERENT STARS

I decided to listen to The Indifferent Stars after seeing it on top of the ProgArchives charts for this year; unfortunately, I found myself very underwhelmed by the album. The album is not necessarily derivative, but it's a fairly generic combination of atmospheric prog like Airbag, a kind of moody Wilson-esque vibe, and a more gothic/darkwave influence akin to The Cure, or even early Cocteau Twins. However, it falls short of achieving the emotional energy that makes those styles really work.

To start off with some more positive thoughts on the album, the vocals on the album are fantastic, and I really enjoyed some of the vocal harmonies throughout. Furthermore, while it's not very prevalent throughout most of the album, there is some very excellent guitar work on the last few tracks, especially the closing song "Let Them In". That being said, let's dig into the various issues that drag the album down.

One of the more superficial comments I have is that the lyrics aren't necessarily the strongest (from "Sirensong": "When we meet again / It will be across the wild and raging river / So when we sing again / Will your melody release me / Or drag me to the depths?"). That being said, it's nothing more than a bit of clunkiness and awkward phrasing, so it's not exactly a dealbreaker.

However, my real problem lies in the sheer lack of coherence both within and between songs on the album. Many of the songs are fairly disjointed. They don't really follow any logical song structure, but rather feel like they've been slapped together as a combination of a few different ideas. Some songs are more guilty of this than others, the most offensive probably being the closer "Let Them In". While it's completely possible to make the argument that the song takes the format of a "suite" or whatever, the sections of it feel completely unrelated. For example, the aforementioned fantastic guitar solo, which comes after a brief solo piano moment, has no transition and jumps into an entirely different key center than the section before. Later on there is another completely different section of the song that only feels less abrupt due to the extensive atmospheric section before it. The end of the song is ALSO very abrupt; it feels like they picked a random downbeat to end on. As many of my reviews, it may seem like I'm getting hung up on a single song, but it is an example of an issue that permeates the whole album.

The songs also lack cohesion between them; they don't feel related in any thematic way. They sort of just feel like 6 different songs by the same band, rather than 6 songs that belong on an album together. That being said, it is difficult to distinguish any of the songs from each other when reflecting on the album, which I suppose is a bit contradictory, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The listening experience generally felt like a slog through 44 minutes of music.

Perhaps the strongest moment of the album is the last two minutes of "The Lord Giveth...", which I felt was a really impactful ending that had a lot of excellent energy. Unfortunately, the preceding four minutes are nothing special, and blend in completely with the rest of the album.

Overall, I think the album has some excellent vocal work, and I do like the combination of influences that the band draws upon; however, the songwriting just isn't there to support the performance.