Customer Reviews

Self Navigation

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A lot of albums start off on their strongest songs, to suck people in so they will listen to the rest. Not so with Crushed Stars' "Self Navigation," where the opener is among the weakest. It's a clumsy misfire in an album of pretty but rather passionless pop songs.

After starting off slow with the meandering "Liza in Silver" and crystalline "Letters To Munich," the album speeds up with snowflakey ballads ("Ever Since Autumn," the plaintive "Gordon"), percussion-y pop (the hookless "Exit Wound") and distant space-pop (the ethereal "Outside the Stars Are Falling"). Everything rounds off on a horn-augmented musical trip in "Walkabout."

The feeling of "Self Navigation" is cold, airy and sparkly, like little bits of frozen stars. And Crushed Stars is at its best when it sticks to that formula. It stumbles on the more prosaic tracks like the depressing "Tow Truck," but blossoms at the beginning and ends with more ethereal pop songs. "Outside the Stars Are Falling" has what sounds like winter wind underlying the slow guitar plucking.

Vocalist Todd Gautreau does not have a great voice. It's not a bad voice, but it fails to mesh with the wispy, crystalline music. He lacks the quirkiness or vibrance that could make them come alive. And the songwriting is a mixed bag, melancholy little ditties that occasionally dip into obvious rhyming schemes ("She looks just like her mother/looks just like a film star/there will be no other/quite the way you are").

"Self Navivation" is best described as a stargazing album, a pretty little collection of airy pop songs. Just stick to Crushed Stars' cold little ballads and skip the pop.

this cd is absolutely gorgeous and terribly underrated. i guess the music alone could be compared to the likes of mogwai, explosions in the sky, godspeed you black emperor, etc. but the vocals are what really catch you, and sweep you in. his voice sounds dreamy and uncertain but honest. the lyrics are moody and fragile. it's a stargazing soundtrack by definition.

Crushed Stars is a very aptly named band. After all, this album really is a concoction of frappe solar brilliance. It's a glowing disc of post nuclear melodies and ghostly lyrics. The vocals of Todd Gautreau are alternately haunting and sadly friendly. This album lives somewhere between the Church and Elliot Smith with a little Brian Eno and Nick Drake orbiting a few songs. Honestly, even trying to compare it to other works is pointless. The songs have an antigravity feel to them. This CD is something from another place and time all together.

Should appeal to fans of Pernice Brothers, Sea and Cake, The Apartments, Epic Soundtracks. Wouldn't sound out of place on Drag City. Centro-Matic's drummer guests on several tracks.