Gossamer
Days CD
Select CD # 1 in the player above. The
new record "Gossamer Days" is now available. REVIEWS Enamored of refracted sunlight and beams through leafy trees; it’s careful, considered, graceful, and in love with the feel of warmth on eyelids. In addition to Gautreau’s hushed vocals — he continues the line from Nick Drake to the Clientele and the gentle pop experiments of former Unrest drummer Phil Krauth’s solo albums — Gossamer Days features a lot of softly-tumbling guitar lines and slow-motion moments that allow for everything to unfold at its own speed. And while this is all very nice, it’s songs like “In Parallel” and “Life Until Now” that are more rewarding, since Gautreau stays restrained on the mic but lets the backgrounds bloom with horn sections, organ, lead guitar figures, and even the steady, crisp chatter of a snare drum on the latter. “All Lovers Are Blind” employs a quiet trumpet and the tinkle of percussion, too; it’s probably the closest Gossamer Days gets to a true 1960s pop tribute. Another late highlight is “Snow Day,” an instrumental that seems to have cut its pristine slabs of electric piano right out of a glacier. It’s a nice addition to a record that’s pretty damn dreamy throughout; with its knowing solitude and broadly romantic lyrics, it features the sort of sound you’d imagine as the score to your fantasy autumn relationship with a pretty college professor. “We talked about Camus, we listened to Burt Jansch…the collars on our sweaters got in the way of our kissing.” — Detour Glossy pop music. Deliberately paced tempos are set by finger-picked guitar patterns augmented by sustained keyboard chords, and Gautreau calmly and indistinctly intones his lyrics within the mix. It's all dreamy and gauzy and vague, music meant to create (or accompany) a sleepy mood rather than to listen to carefully, like the earnest mumbling of Michael Stipe in early R.E.M. if the band were being produced by an ambient-minded Brian Eno. It is likely to soothe. - all music guide The aptly named Crushed Stars are the indie pop project of Todd Gautreau and in the past, his music has been very, very quiet. While the ten songs on Gossamer Days could hardly be described as such, they do possess a richness that he had only hinted at previously. That might be in part thanks to the production of Stuart Sikes, who also worked with Cat Power on The Greatest, but it is also reflected in Gautreau’s songs, which mange to carefully walk the line between bleak and beautiful. There are hints of Red House Painters and the Clientele, but they are closest in spirit to nearly forgotten Sarah Records band Brighter, who also produced this kind of wonderful melancholy. When it comes to quiet indie pop, Gossamer Days is pretty much as good as it gets - exclaim You
won't find a more truthfully evocative Artist - Title pairing, anywhere.
Listening to, say, the opening track "Spies," is a little
like watching celestial bodies shooting up a hazy night sky, stardust
in slow-mo. Like a less enunciated Red House Painters. "Life Until
Now," meanwhile, introduces slightly more insistent snares and
hi-hats, but by verse two that's milk-coated with warmed, plinking keyboard
patterns and texturizing, rising guitars, keeping everything ... very
... dreamy. - stereogum Gautreau continues
to hone his brand of polite indie-rock, recording with Stuart Sikes
(Cat Power). It's the sort of album that starts in the background of
a relaxing day, and seeps through the cracks of scattered attentions,
attaching itself with careful guitar hooks and an absolutely pleasant
mood. This album is a contradiction: dense and delicate, minimal and
complicated, atmospheric and striking; It bends the singer-songwriter
genre with spatial colorings and patient unraveling. a facilitating warmth, one that easily brings you back to soft and tender moments that are long past. A liquid reverb ripples off of Todd Gautreau's vocals, lapping against the quietly seductive instrumentation. Yes... quietly seductive... even when you turn the volume up on Crushed stars you're simply moving closer to a purring cat. This is the kind of music that relaxes me, I don't even have to understand the lyrics, they could be Portuguese for all it matters... it's the vibe borne out of the various elements that makes this music magical. - sixeyes one of the most
lush and expansively beautiful albums I've ever had the pleasure of
day-dreaming to. I'm almost at a loss for words, or maybe I just can't
think of words that are as beautiful as the music I want to describe
them with.-
it
covers the hillsides Crushed Stars’ reverb-heavy vocal patterns and liquid-like guitar/organ melodies make for the perfect late night bedroom-pop listen...radiates in purity, basking in its calm nature. Relaxing and rejuvenating, Gossamer Days will slip into your soul with ease, breaking down that which is bad and replacing it with something a little bit better. - fensepost a sweet and fragile bit of bedroom pop…though the burning soul flickering away at the center of these starlit cuts is obvious enough. On this, his Stuart Sikes (Cat Power, Whiter Stripes, Modest Mouse) produced third album, Grutreau prefers to present the bare embers of his heart…as if any inferno of thought and emotion would be too much for the delicate silky strands of guitar and voice to handle. The result is an album of uncomplicated beauty. Glossy yet downtrodden, precious yet ultimately headstrong; Gossamer Days is a strikingly honest piece of music in the vein of Red House Painters and Kings of Convenience. – baeblemusic
Obsolescence
CD
REVIEWS An opus of romantic gloom... a dreamy,
whispered collection - The
Observer Perfect rainy-day weather
music.
Buoyed by clean guitar and warm keyb’s and in his soft, steady
voice,
Self
Navigation CD Select
CD #3 in the player above for samples and downloads REVIEWS A glittery and precious geode whose crystals are etched out of fragility, insecurity, and humanity's emotional underbelly. It transcends limits and expectations, and becomes something more beautiful, sensual, and meaningfulthan the sum of its parts. Has the intensity of a diary. Words seemed plucked from that perfect place of passionate immediacy and desperation. - Pop Matters The stunning result is enough to make you wish it were night all day long.- Pitchfork Like something beautiful was pulled from the heavens and broken into several tiny pieces-Shredding Paper A record for a melancholy autumn spent gazing at unreachable stars.-Opuszine The kind of passion rarely heard on pop records.-Devil in the Woods Creates a meditative mood and sticks to it. Despite the languid pace of the songs,things don't get dull. Gautreau imbues his sound with such feeling and grace that it's hard to let go. Utterly seductive. That sound. It is the sound that really makes this disc. A certain echo in that guitar, the way the keyboards add just the right touch. Almost everything on this album has a delicate touch, to the extent that even the slightest heavy hand could ruin things. That doesn't happen. This album could not be forced. It simply had to flow, and it does. Crushed Stars has made music of uncommon elegance. Its muted dramatics are as moving as the most bombastic symphony. Utterly moving.-Aiding and Abetting There's a certain amount of stigma attached to the world of indie pop; far too many people have the attitude that it is self-indulgent and disposable. Yet there is something so incredibly honest about lo-fi guitar pop that wears everything on its sleeve, and that is exactly what Crushed Stars do. Self Navigation is a quiet, fragile album with songs that proceed at slightly more than a snail's pace - the upbeat moments are few and far between, and even on songs such as "Exit Wound" there is still a healthy dose of melancholy lurking in the lyrics. Musically, the album is sparse with Gautreau's guitar dominating the majority of the songs, while a few are fleshed out with some keyboards (impersonating trumpets and horns), but it is the quietness of Self Navigation that will stay will you after the CD stops spinning. It doesn't sound unlike the former Sarah Records band Brighter, or Trembling Blue Stars, with songs that walk along the tightrope between depressing and indifferent, never quite falling on one side or the other. Self Navigation is not one of those records that will have you singing along with every song; you might not even find yourself humming the tunes for days afterwards, but as you listen, you'll find yourself completely transfixed by Crushed Stars' beautiful music.-EXCLAIM What would happen if somebody took one of those jazzy post-rock lead guitar lines -- the sort of inquisitive, repetitive guitar figure practiced by second-generation instrumentalists like 33.3 -- and grafted it onto a low key folk-pop song? Crushed Stars apparently decided to find out, and the results are surprisingly impressive. Rather than hanging loosely on a minimalist framework and struggling desperately to engage your interest, these probing guitar lines find themselves resting on a bed of simple pop strumming, with low-key, confessional male vocals wrapping the package nicely (imagine a late-night jam with China Crisis and a few of the more responsible members of Tortoise). The combination of elements makes for a listening experience that's charged with subtle nuance; rather than wondering where, if anywhere, the song is going, you'll marvel at the difference between these playing styles and the ease with which they interact. When additional instruments are employed, such as the wind section used for "Gordon", the canvas is stretched even further; conversely. Most importantly, it's clear that Crushed Stars didn't set out to make a self-involved sonic experiment. They set out to make an enjoyable, unusual pop album, and they succeeded. - Splendid Intimate, elegant
bedroom pop. Songs that gently go their own way, not expecting you to
notice. Mysterious and poetic... a pop-no-mans-land - Crud Magazine
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