Photo by Blake Doyle

Artist: Starcleaner Reunion, the four-piece of vocalist and tambourine player Jo Roman, guitarists Pat Drummond and Neil Torman, and bassist Adam Kenter

Location: New York City, New York by way of Springfield, NJ

Buzz: Something you, too, may have been heard a friend or few on the inside of the music scene share with you lately is a growing opinion that many of the younger artists wanting to make music are doing it because they just want to be in a band and reap the benefits of whatever social privileges (and perhaps a boost of cool cred) it might grant them. It’s a fair observation, especially when there’s no “third place” anymore for the kids to hang.

Starcleaner Reunion sidestep that notion even if its four members are in fact a group of longtime friends who formed a band because of their overlapping desire to make music together. It’s a greet flag alone, however, that they definitely studied up a reverence for a time before they existed beyond the usual static and hiss clustering in today’s wave of young shoegazers, with theirs being more bookish and deep diving the bins for the niche classics beyond the obvious paths.

The spectral hum, retro-fitted synths, motorik kicks, and easy-listening indie rocking of bands like Stereolab and Broadcast are both completely formidable reference points for the lush, cosmic psychedelia heard when pressing playing on the New York City band’s debut album, Umbrella. Yet, even so, the four-piece are expanding on that energy by way of dream-weaving portals while encounter an otherworldly crushes in their rifts. As vocalist Jo Roman recounts memories of places and faces, you also see and hear the scene’s phases past, present, and futures converging in a sound that’s just as classic as those which came before them.

“I listen, obsessive / To every song on the radio / I seem to, come back to / The same old song,” she sings on its opener “Theme”, though nothing feels particularly worn out in its welcome. Perhaps she and the rest of her friends have just managed to find a way to break the time and space continuum — a true new third place for them to escape.

Sound: A box of well-loved vintage niche shoegaze and shoegaze-adjacent CDs passed on from one generation to the next, reimagined through the fresh ears of today.

Recommended: “Theme”, “Never Odd or Even”, and “Weather Instrument” from their newly-released debut album, Umbrella

Starcleaner Reunion’s Umbrella is available now on Take Care Records.