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

[#] Leave Here a Stranger (2001)

Mono musical magic.

Reviewed July 8, 2024

There's often one specific album in a band's catalog where they go for it. The Big One. The Ambitious One. Leave Here a Stranger is Starflyer's Ambitious album, a mono throwback with Jason Martin's childhood hero, Daniel Amos' Terry Scott Taylor, running the boards, as completely out of step with then-contemporary (or even our contemporary) music as the Starflyer himself felt with his own music career. "All My Friends Who Play Guitar", "When I Learn to Sing", "Night Music"—yeah, it's music about music, but it's more than that. It's a record about inadequacy in talent and in faith, about boredom in a life most conceive as exciting and high-flying, and about pleasure in the simple things at the end of the day. It's lush, as outwardly gentle as it is inwardly brave, and it might just be the best thing they've ever recorded.

The sonic brew Leave Here a Stranger concocts, of tambourines, handclaps, pizzicato strings, and shimmering keys, piled like bedded leaves underneath clean-toned guitars and leads and, of course, Jason's breathy chest vocals, isn't just singular in the Starflyer canon, it's singular anywhere else. Jason never lets the music explode as most artists would, the dread and ennui bleeding through in the details instead. To that end, "Give Up the War" simmers to embers in the desert sun as Jason contemplates Paul the Apostle's undying commitment to his missionary work, "I Like Your Photographs" is a midnight military march about finding your place in this strange country we Americans live in, and despite his strained relationship to the business, smack dab in the middle of the album, "Things Like This Help Me" is a warm embrace of community and music giving you a reason to press through it all. Absolutely sublime.

Essential:	"All My Friends Who Play Guitar", "Give Up the War", "I Like Your Photographs"
Quintessential:	"Things Like This Help Me"
Non-Essential:
Rating: