Starflower: Ceasefires (KHY Suomen Musiikki, 2010)

Starflower has matured since the release of the debut album. Less cute and more beautiful. Less indiepop and more ambitious ballads. They are certainly standing closer to the edge of my comfort zone, but thanks to the quality of the songs, they don’t step out of bounds and Antti Ojala’s sweet and sentimental voice is still capable of carrying the songs to my heart. However, Starflower’s second album Ceasefires has one obvious flaw. There’s not much point in complaining about it, but the fact still is, that the album is way too long. At least I have major difficulties to stay interested through the whole thing even though I do really like the majority of the song material.  This means that there’s a minor danger that such great songs like Light as a Friend and Run For Your Life just gets buried in the crowd. Ceasefires is still a fine album and quite a logical step forward. It doesn’t drive away the indie pop folks and hopefully brings new fans to the table.

Starflower Website
Starflower at myspace

There was one week delay with the release of Starflower’s second album Ceasefires, but it did hit the stores on wednesday 10th of march. It was released by KHY Suomen musiikki and this is the first single of the album:

Starflower Website
Starflower at myspace

Lately I’ve been listening to Micah Schnabel’s (Two Cow Garage) solo album and I like it a lot. Self-released small edition of the album came out last year and was quickly sold out. Thankfully Suburban Home Records fell in love with it and is now re-releasing the album with new artwork. I preordered and got a free download with it. It’s a very fine album indeed. If you don’t believe me, you can stream the whole album on Suburban Home’s new listening station. Oh and if you liked that great video by TCSupergenius, be sure to check out his other videos. There’s some other fabulous stuff. Especially those Austin Lucas videos are pure gold.

What else is new? Well The Fox Hunt. I already mentioned them a while ago. I still don’t have the albums. I should get Nowhere Bound in a week or two, because it’s currently travelling from cdbaby to this household (too bad post from USA to Finland nowadays seem to take longer than before). Anyway, the point I needed to make is that The Fox Hunt has also new album out now and you can order it from their website. I did that some days ago. Check out The Fox Hunt on myspace or spotify if you like things like early Old Crow Medicine Show for example.

If that isn’t a perfect soundtrack for lonely days & whiskey nights, try Otis Gibbs. I recently streamed his new album Joe Hill’s Ashes on his website and because it sounded rather perfect to me, I ordered it.

Last friday’s FOTM was a success as well. Ben’s Diapers and Hi-Lo & In Between were both really good and because it was a record release partee for both, I’ve been listening to their new albums during the last few days. I think both of them are great albums. Ben’s Diapers threw in a couple of surprising curve balls midway through the park, but those new dimensions added more colour and actually made the record work perfectly as a whole. Hi-Lo & In Between’s record is also gorgeous. I’m extremely happy that they were able to make it sound so perfect this time around. It’s totally my kind of country/folk band and I’ve enjoyed their live performances from the start. Still I would have liked to love their debut more than I actually did. There was not much wrong with it, but it still wasn’t able to capture their magic like this follow up thankfully can. Well done. Reviews to follow if I can find the cure for lazyness..

Oh.. and Starflower’s new album came out today. A proper news entry about that in a day or two. Just wanted to get that beauty of my chest. I have to wake up in six hours, so I better continue some other night. Take care and all that..

Starflower member Lauri Hannus directed this wonderful music video for the first single of the new album, You King.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAB20zz-aDI]

Starflower Website
Starflower at myspace