Starflyer 59 Album Recommendations: "Silver"

Album Recommendations: Silver

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that 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

[#] Silver (1994)

The hazy one that looms over them all.

Reviewed June 16, 2024

"Alternative music doesn't exist. Shoegazer music has been dead since 1991." Sharp words from a guy who, by that point, had already been through the ups and downs of the record business, just not the pop one—the Christian one. Silver continues to be Starflyer 59's big record, The One that looms over all The Others, one of the progenitors of 90s Chrindie, and the album that continually gets the band labeled shoegazers and MBV disciples despite all the other wrinkles to their sound. I think this has a lot to do with Starflyer's discography being so large and covering so much sonic ground—they are what you want them to be. (Plenty of their disciples also misrepresent their sound; no, the band did not abandon guitar distortion with The Fashion Focus, sorry.) So for a would-be Starflyer fan, how do you reconcile these two worlds? Are they even really Christian?? (You get one line about Jesus on the whole project.)

Start with the source. Jason Martin is the same Jason Martin whether he's laid over top moody Wurlitzers, surf guitar, or shivery tremolo feedback. His vocals are whisper-thin, highly understated, and his songs are always built of sturdy, in this case metal-edged, chords and simple, melodic lead lines that gets stuck in your head easily. Where Silver stands out in their discography is its fogginess, heavy and stratospheric as a substitute for introversion. The production on here, courtesy of two members of Mortal (one of whom would go on to play guitar and keys for Switchfoot) is genuinely quite lush, and the slower songs, namely "Monterey" and "Droned", suit that and come away the real highlights. Is Silver a good starting point for a new fan? Well, it's damn good, that's the good part. Just don't get too attached to the fog machine.