February 2002
Starsailor Charts Its Own Course
Don't think Coldplay revisited. New British sensation Starsailor has a mind of its own.
By his own admission, Starsailor singer James Walsh can be a little sensitive, but that may not be such a bad thing: Without the extraordinary convergence of introversion and sensitivity that characterizes Walsh's personality, Starsailor's Capitol Records debut, Love Is Here, wouldn't sound the way it does. Having a bad childhood didn't hurt, either.
"It was never growing up as far as my parents or my situation, really; it was just the sort of isolation I felt from my peers because I was so oversensitive," Walsh says now. "I felt inspired by music and wanted to reach out for something like that. I just felt a bit different."
As what tends to happen, music proves a powerful tool for medicating the tortured soul, and Walsh was no exception. Putting together a viable band was another problem entirely. "Over the course of three or four years, we ran through six guitarists," he remembers. "I think it took us that time to realize that we didn�t suit trying to be Britpop � trying to be Oasis or the Bluetones."
A large chuck of those years were spent at Wigan and Lee music college in Wigan, England, where Walsh initially hooked up with bassist James Stelfox and drummer Ben Bryne. Starsailor was christened after a 1970 album by Tim Buckley, whose family would prove the deciding factor in determining the band's eventual musical direction.
"I started listening to Neil Young and Jeff Buckley, and just hearing the raw emotion and real modesty in which they performed just sort of inspired me," says Walsh. "Because I thought to make it in music, you had to have flamboyancy and arrogance about you, because I'd grown up listening to Oasis and U2, and stuff like that. Buckley inspired me to sing with a soul."
The band eventually settled in the Northwest England town of Chorley, where, in early 2000, the gorgeous "Lullaby" was the first song Walsh wrote in post-Buckley mode. The song was born at a time when the band had recently lost its latest (and, it turns out, last) full-throttle guitarist.
"I wrote 'Lullaby,' and we just decided that rather than trying to find another guitar player, we thought the song suited piano a lot better," Walsh explains. "So that's when we phoned [keyboardist] Barry [Westhead] up. A few weeks later, we were playing at the Heavenly Social in London, and an NME journalist came down and wrote a good review, and the rest is history, really."
Starsailor now finds itself, along with Travis, Coldplay, Embrace, and Elbow, smack in the middle of a large crop of English bands pushing sensitive near-rock -- a result of the fallout from Britpop's post-OK Computer crash. Honesty and melody, rather than arrogance and excess, are at the forefront of the movement.
"There is always gonna be people who think we are soft and overwrought, but I just feel better letting
everything out as it is," Walsh says. "As soon as it comes into my head, it comes out of my mouth, and I
think that's a better, and more honest, way of writing."
