Starsailor release an album that sets them firmly as the breakthrough act of the year

Making music comes naturally to some although most contemporary albums appear to be laborious piecing together. The former applies to Starsailor, a band that has been gaining critical approval and gathering fandom at an incredible rate. ‘Love Is Here’ is an album recorded in very few short weeks last Spring and it contains freshness, spontaneity as well as an emotional cornucopia.

It also contains, very surprisingly, a sense of maturity of outlook, an emotional adulthood which should be far from a reach of its chief songsmith and singer, James Walsh. It is in part to do with his talent but also his influences, all songwriting giants: Tim (the band is named after his 1971 album) Buckley and his son Jeff, and Neil Young.

The first two are inspirational inasmuch to point him to the depth of human emo-makeup and lyric-power, while the more rocking elements come from Sir Distortion, Mr Young. It is still early days and there is no Tim Buckley-sque eclecticism but that is a possibility for the future. Right now you get an enormous ballad like ‘Way To Fall’, so impassioned to send you to a feel-repairer. Coldplay, whom they are often compared to, and its school of music making appear sooo redundant, at once.

The three singles, ‘Fever’, ‘Good Souls’ and ‘Alcoholic’, are all enclosed but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The other cuts are deeper, more engaging and totally captivating. ‘Tie Up My Hands’ is such an anthemic opener that it should get a Brit Award on its own; ‘Lullaby’ is piano-driven and voiced acrobatically one would expect from someone twice Walsh’s age. (Bee Gees backed by Billy Joel singing a Buckley song and it is a compliment.) The title track is a rousing alarm for males’ emotional reticence.

There are touches of jazz and prog-rock but it is not all serious; there is a bonus track on the album that sounds like fun have been had in the studio. Starsailor, on evidence of this, are true contenders for the crown of this year’s model and should be huge before you can say ‘Big music is back’.

8/10