HEY THERE, WILD THINGS!
Set to return with their first album in seven years, Starsailor’s James Walsh opens up on the group’s latest outing!
Starsailor’s new album, ‘Where The Wild Things Grow’, is their first in seven years - since their fifth UK Top 30 LP, ‘All This Life’ (2017) - but its origins go hand-in-hand with their debut, ‘Love Is Here’ (2001), for which they recently embarked on a 20th anniversary tour.
Having peaked at No. 2 upon its release and gone on to shift over one million copies, the record affiliated the band with the New Acoustic Movement - alongside the likes of Coldplay and Travis - and while performing it in full across 14 shows back in 2022, they took the opportunity to test out the early ideas that would form their latest project.
It was second single, Heavyweight, that stood out in the set - a track that, according to vocalist and songwriter James Walsh, taps into the band’s strive for longevity: “This isn’t a fleeting thing, and we’re in it for the long run, the ups and downs, and it will feel heavy sometimes.”
Across the record, produced by Rick McNamara, they touch on a multitude of themes; Dead On The Money is “a song about being flat broke but full of hope, although I like the fact it means exactly right too. Like knowing deep down you’re on the right track even though recovery is slow,” says Walsh, while the folk-tinged Flowers was inspired by a documentary about a flower seller in Aleppo who “just kept setting up his stall, despite the bombs going off around him, dedicated to providing a tiny haven of beauty during such a devastating time”.
Tapping into various transatlantic influences, from
The Eagles (Enough (I Should Be Home By Now)) to Crosby Stills and Nash
(After The Rain), alongside themes of love and hope, it makes for a collection that’s instantly classic while quintessentially Starsailor. On Hard Love, Walsh muses on the simplicity of single life, whilst Hanging In The Balance is about the delicate time in “the early stages of a relationship when it’s starting to get real and you’re on the precipice between it becoming something life-changing or you both going your separate ways.”
Leading the record is its sublime title track, which brings to the fore a sense of mystery and unease, reminiscent of early Bowie and Pink Floyd recordings. “I wrote it in my old flat at night,” recalls Walsh. “I could hear the pipes creaking. I was thinking of Maurice Sendak and Stanley Donwood’s Radiohead art.
“There’s an early Ed Harcourt song called Beneath The Heart Of Darkness that’s an influence too. The brooding otherworldly darkness.”
That feeling of the unknown is innate to the group; formed in and around Wigan at the start of the millennium and featuring Walsh (guitar, vocals), James Stelfox (bass), Barry Westhead (keyboards) and Ben Byrne (drums), the band impacted globally with their debut album, produced by Steve Osborne and recorded at Rockfield Studios, which delivered the UK Top 20 hits Fever, Good
IN SPITE OF ALL THAT WE ACHIEVED BACK IN THE DAY, THE FEELING OF BEING THE UNDERDOG HAS NEVER QUITE LEFT ME
Souls and Alcoholic.
For their second album, ‘Silence Is Easy’ (2003), they teamed up with legendary songwriter and producer,
Phil Spector, for what ended up being his final production work before his conviction of murder in 2009 and his death in 2021.
The collaboration came about following Spector’s daughter, Nicole, attending one of the band’s American concerts in the winter of 2002, but it was an uneasy alliance and after an aborted stint with the musician at
Abbey Road, the band ended up co-producing the rest of the album with Danton Supple and John Leckie, with only two songs from the initial sessions - including the UK Top 10 title song - making it onto the record.
“Working with him was a tale of two halves,” he reflects. “The first sessions we did were great, and we got Silence Is Easy and White Dove out of them which still stand up. When we reconvened, it became more difficult to work with him. It was a stressful time for the band because we really wanted it to work at the time given the pressure on the second album and the hype around a Spector-produced album.”
The singer adds: “I feel uneasy revisiting that chapter given the tragic events. It was a huge honour to work with him at the time but it feels different now.”
Two years later, Starsailor’s third album, ‘On The Outside’ (2005), arrived; produced by Rob Schnapf in Los Angeles, it spawned three singles –
In The Crossfire, This Time and Keep Us Together – and led to some of the band’s biggest live performances, including shows at Hyde Park Calling and V Festival in 2006, and several dates supporting The Rolling Stones in Europe.
The band’s fourth album, ‘All The
Plans’, later materialised in 2009, described by Walsh at the time as “the perfect companion to ‘Love Is Here’”, featuring Stones guitarist Ronnie
Wood on the title track and receiving widespread acclaim. It led to a hiatus, punctuated by ‘Good Souls: The Greatest Hits’ in 2015, after which their fifth album, similarly produced by Embrace guitarist McNamara, arrived in 2017.
Now on the verge of releasing its follow-up, Walsh admits that, more than two decades in, he still feels there’s plenty to prove. “In spite of all that we achieved back in the day, the feeling of being the underdog has never quite left me,” concludes the musician.
“I’ve changed a lot as a person since the early days of Starsailor. I feel much more grounded and have a better perspective on things.”
● ‘Where The Wild Things Grow’ is out March 22 on Townsend.