Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Starflyer 59

[#] Gold (1995)

Starflyer are near to the brokenhearted.

Reviewed June 29, 2023

I can only imagine how deranged Gold sounded when it came out. The smother of rumbling guitars, shrieking, agonized feedback, tremolo leads that tremble like a nervous breakdown—counteracted by bone-dry 70's drums and Jason Martin's anti-loud vocals, whispered like the man's dying in front of you. I cannot think of another album that has a sonic profile like Gold. This was the product of a sick mind left to record an album effectively by his lonesome, the kind who hasn't seen the sun all month, and the song titles sound like the self-absorbed castigating you do when you're sick and navelgazing. "Stop Wasting Your Whole Life", "When You Feel Miserable", "Messed Up Over You". I could certainly relate when I found it.

Though the thick, almost cinematic smog of guitars and ear-splitting feedback freakouts are draws all their own, Gold's gentler and poppier moments are just as striking. "You're Mean" strikes a spring reverb-loaded 60s surfy tone, and "Somewhere When Your Heart Glowed the Hope" has a cautious optimism to it that makes it one of my favorites across the entire Starflyer catalog. Though it's usually pretty simple lyrically (my friend sushi once described Gold as effectively instrumental in practice), the low-key closer "One Shot Juanita" offers the sharpest, most depressed and resigned line on the entire project: "Time's only wasted when you know like I know/The past times weren't the better times at all". This could've easily been maudlin mush, but by letting the guitars do the wailing, Starflyer comes out with an ideal soundtrack for anyone's moping.