"Their calling is to communicate emotionally through song," claims the press release that arrives with Starsailor's second album, perpetuating the weird myth that this Wigan quartet are in some way a soulful band. If that's the case, 'Silence Is Easy' proves that the emotional has become incredibly mundane all of a sudden.
For here are 12 songs laden with all the contemporary signifiers of emotion, and none of the impact. Here's James Walsh singing in that tremulous warble of his, as if the odd wobbling note somehow verifies the intensity of his experiences. Here's the string section, that clichéd substitute for real grandeur or depth. And here are some shoddy platitudes about the human condition. "Some of us laugh, some of us cry, some of us smoke, some of us lie," groans Walsh, effortfully, "but it's all just a way that we cope with our lives."
As you might have picked up by now, Starsailor are an uncommonly annoying band. It's not all their fault: plenty of journalists and music business schemers have claimed this bunch of joyless Verve fans are really a Classic Rock band, four men who can tap into a fathomless reserve of truth and integrity and raw, heart-rending majesty. And the million sales of 'Love Is Here' suggest that they satisfy a public need for easy-to-swallow passion.
But really, is this the best we can do? Compared with 'Silence Is Easy', Coldplay suddenly sound gory, and Richard Ashcroft's solo albums positively insurrectionary. James Walsh's protestations of love and tempestuous feelings may be genuine, but they feel utterly uninvolving, blustery and hollow. This is a pompous, blandly histrionic album, faintly monumental in its drabness.
The presence of Phil Spector on two tracks ('Silence Is Easy' and 'White Dove') might have been arranged to give Starsailor something to talk about in interviews, since the legendary producer's tracks are virtually indistinguishable from the pabulum which surrounds them. Meanwhile 'Four To The Floor', Starsailor's much-vaunted flirtation with the dancefloor, is about as dynamic and engaging as Shed Seven's 'Disco Down'.
It all amounts to clinical soul-baring, a kind of white bread emoting that strives for posterity, for universality, and for minimum offence, and fails utterly to engage on any level. 'Silence Is Easy' desperately wants to mean something, but ends up sounding as emotionally vapid as a Mariah Carey record: inoffensive, in fact, to the point of being violently offensive.
Noel Gallagher hates them. For once, you can see his point.
