Have you ever seen “My Blue Heaven?” It’s a Steve Martin/Rick Moranis comedy where Steve Martin plays a New York gangster who turns state’s evidence and gets dropped off in the placid sunshine of the fictional San Diego suburb of Freiburg, California. Parenthetically, the movie is (very) loosely based on the life of Henry Hill, so some have suggested that “My Blue Heaven” is technically a sequel to “Goodfellas.”
Anyway, there’s a scene where Todd Wilkinson AKA Vincent Antonelli (Martin,) is out to dinner with a bunch of other wiseguys who are in witness protection in the same geographic area, and one of them picks up a roll from the table and declares “what the frig is this?” When he’s informed it’s a popover, he breaks it open and proclaims “there’s nothing in it!” From an Italian cuisine standpoint, it’s clear that he expects a knotted piece of bread to be stuffed with something.
“Starcatcher,” the third studio album from Upper Midwest retro trendsetters (how can you be both?) Greta Van Fleet, is the popover in this anecdote. There’s nothing in it.
Not to mince words: this album is awful. The ten tracks contained on the album all sound like rough demo cuts from the planning phase of a record that’s a year or more away. The one cut that has any real potential at all is “Runway Blues,” and it’s the most demo-reminiscent of the bunch, as it not only spans all of a minute and change, but ends on a fade-out, so the song feels incomplete even in its final form.
The trouble begins early and never lets up. “Fate of the Faithful” is a directionless mess of a song that starts with a buildup that never goes anywhere. It sets a terrible precedent for everything on the record that follows, which is that it tries to lean into Josh Kiszka’s vocal prowess to carry the overbearing weight of ponderously tiresome rhythms.
There’s a lot of harsh death metal out there, and much of it possesses more intelligible lyrics than “Starcatcher.” Kiszka seems content to settle into a paroxysm of strangled caterwauling, or in the case of the closing moments of “The Indigo Streak” and “Meeting the Master,” repetitive cooing that is in no way compelling. It’s like playing a 78 LP of Ella Fitzgerald’s revolutionary scat singing on 33 and 1/3 and living with the consequences.
Whatever you may believe about Greta Van Fleet, and there are approximately half again as many opinions about them as there are people on planet Earth, there is no denying that their most famous songs had an infectious accessibility to them, the kind of spark that ignited the imaginations of the fans and music media alike, riveting crowds and drawing praise from around the globe.
“Starcatcher” completely misses that mark. Nine of the ten cuts are perfectly happy to amble about in a laconic miasma of simple hooks, unchanging melodies and Kiszka’s strained wailing. This is a hard rock band that made an easy-listening record, and failed on that latter point in that there’s no emotional appeal in any particular direction. None of these songs seem to be about anything, made worse by the indecipherable wall of mangled words. There’s no connection here, just a pile of jumbled rhythms and occasional but inconsistent harmonies that seem to believe that their simply being is enough.
What the hell happened here? Why does “Starcatcher” boast none of the bravado of Greta Van Fleet’s previous endeavors? Why do none of these songs have any punch at all? Difficult to determine what the cause may be, but this is a clear warning sign that this train may be out of stream already. “Starcatcher” is a popover – looks nice sitting on the plate, but it has no guts, and is staunchly unfulfilling.
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