Starsailor : 'All The Plans'
Released: 15th June 2009
Label:Virgin Records
Ever been back to a place you loved as a child? Perhaps seized by a fit of nostalgia you decide to revisit that park you used to play in, you know, the one with acres of verdant grass, slide the size of a house and your imaginary friend Peter? Then you go back and find out it was about three foot square, the slide just about as tall as the dog shit bin and that Peter was in fact real and is now on the sex offenders list. It's always a bad thing to try and revisit the past as all your left with is a disappointment that can taint some good memories and be the cause of some costly therapy sessions. Unfortunately, Starsailor's "All the Plans", the title track from their new album, does just that.
Starsailor themselves are a bit of a Marmite band. I've spoken to people who are die hard fans who can talk for hours on how they are massively underrated, only pausing to go to the jukebox and put in another 50p for "Alcoholic". I've also spoken to people who think the band are as suicidally dull as being trapped in a lift where David Gray is piped through on loop with only a geography teacher for company. I myself sit on the fence, finding some of there stuff really appealing whilst some of it causes me to reach for the phone and dial The Samaritans. "All the Plans" is very much the latter, making you realise that "a return to form" (as some people have called the album) is only a good thing if it was a solid form in the first place and not as stable a jellyfish in an earthquake.
The song is made from a number cliches and under-developed themes that seems to have been blended together in a cement mixer. The melody is truly awful; sounding like a nursery rhyme about a funeral that builds to a Rivita cracker crumb of a chorus. James Walsh's lyrics lack the heart-wrenching intensity they have been known for in the past, lines like "I warned you not to go on/Cherishing your broken heart/So put that last drink down and/Find a better place to start" sounding like they've been taken from a box of fortune cookies. Topping it all off is the addition of a choir and organ, an obvious attempt to capture that "epic" sound, whereas the reality is more Sunday school.
The guitar part had the potential to be interesting as it's played by Ronnie Wood, even if he is the Ringo Starr of The Stones. However it seems all he could produce was a bit of Oasis guitar karaoke. Can't really blame him though, with his granddaughter of a girlfriend he was probably too worried about making it through each night of passion to concentrate on the track. It definitely shows, his part lacking notable technical flair or even any sort of distinct solo. It all comes across as Starsailor desperately trying to name-drop and flog more copies. Expect the next single to be sold with the claim of being recorded in a room where Lindsay Lohan once passed wind.
"All the Plans" is a track too interested in being crowd-pleasing to please anyone. They stick to a formula they know the fans liked in the past, get a Rock celebrity to guest and make it all sound as inoffensive as possible. The result sounds like the Starsailor of old but lacking any sort of soul. I'm sorry for pissing on your parade if you were expecting something more from this "return to form" single, I was too. If it makes you feel any better I got all nostalgic and bought a Thundercats DVD the other day. The resulting shock of how shit it actually was compared to my memory nearly caused me a mental breakdown. Don't let this shoddy effort do the same and ruin the memory of an otherwise worthy band.
Words: Harvey Ovenden
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