Starcleaner Reunion, Café Life
New York City-based Starcleaner Reunion is a new band of old friends. Singer Jo Roman, guitarists Pat Drummond & Neil Torman, and bassist Adam Kenter have been making music together in various configurations since they were high school students together in New Jersey, but never all together in the same group. After a six-year stint in Montréal for university, Drummond moved to New York in 2022 and they started a new band almost instantly, uniting as the “super group” that they had been anticipating for years. The synthesis afforded by a decade-long connection is a driving force for Starcleaner Reunion; there’s a sense of always feeling on the same creative page. After meeting drummer Sam Unger through a mutual friend in New York City, the band’s lineup materialized and so began this musical project.
While their debut EP, Club Estrella, was a collection of their earliest ideas, Café Life is a fully formed statement of the band’s vision. It meshes the intensity and immediacy of lo-fi rock with the careful production of the band’s electronic influences, indebted just as much to 90s noise pop like Swirlies as to contemporaries like feeble little horse. For the release the band decided to create a makeshift home studio over the course of several months. These informal sessions allowed the band more time to experiment during the recording process.
Crucial to this evolution was linking up with Ruben Radlauer of Model/Actriz for mixing duties. From the start of their collaboration, they felt an immediate bond over their shared enthusiasm for putting unexpected sonic twists into the music. Listen closely and you’ll hear samples of rain and thunderstorms, rumbling 808 sub-bass, digital synthesizers ripped from a decade old copy of GarageBand, and ghostly spoken poetry buried deep in the mix of the 4 songs on Café Life.
The band jokingly refers to their sound as “Euro-pop” a term coined by a promoter at one of their first shows. Café Life is indebted to a certain slowness, a ‘not-hurrying’ – title is a reference to a certain European way of life – refusing to rush anything and taking one’s time. Filtered drums, spots of Rhodes, and bubbling synth lines across the EP hint towards the inspiration of downtempo and trip hop that add to this laid-back vibe, but the band retains a rock oriented sound, with equal influence from international acts like Stereolab, Ivy, Club 8, and Minimum Chips.
From the moment the group was formed, Starcleaner Reunion has been guided by their belief that music can be transportive, and invite the listener to get immersed into a new world. Jo Roman’s lyrics paint a captivating picture – one that prompts audiences to reckon with the impressions that her imagery conjures up. Café Life is their first release that welcomes people into their world. Will you come in?
The Hand That I Put Down, the opening track and first single, is a noise pop song intended to be as blown out as possible, stacking bristling layers of distorted and bit-crushed guitar, indebted just as much to contemporaries like feeble little horse as 90s noise pop like Swirlies. Jo Roman’s lyrics complement the up-tempo staccato melody, reflecting a freedom to exist in the current moment – a way of being that finds in liberty the present.
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