Starling Electric

Clouded Staircase is a self-released album recorded in a Michigan basement home studio. Starling Electric’s debut generated enough positive buzz to garner a re-release contract with Bar None Records. Polished and impressive, this musical magic carpet ride hearkens back to a decade when peace signs and love beads permeated the culture. Singer and songwriter Caleb Dillon is a masterful lyricist with a fascination for what is surreal and elusive. His hazy dreamy lyrics reek of patchouli days and cannabis-fueled nights. The best of his lyrics are laden with cunning nature imagery: “Me and you were clearing the skies/ I’m so far underground/ A snowflake makes no sound.”

With bouncy ba-ba-bas harmonies, guitar and keyboard centered orchestration and 60s styled-lingo—“I was digging the way that you brushed the night from your eyes, and I was probably in the grooviest years of my life,” listeners just might develop an urge to purchase a lava lamp or run barefoot through Strawberry Fields with flowers in their hair.

Starling Electric is The Beach Boys meets Pink Floyd meets Genesis. That’s not to say that they aren’t original or unique because they are. In their own words: “We are a Midwest electric company representing all things melodic, baroque, psychedelicate, and true. We specialize in everything truly great about pop music from 1965 to 1977. We are proud purveyors of both pomp and pop. You can sing along. You can even remember our songs the next day.”

Band members Caleb Dillon, Jason DeCamillis, Christian Anderson, and John Fossum are a mischievous bunch of musical rascals. Their songs display sun-dappled intricately layered melodies and a seasoned wordsmith’s cleverness, a trait exhibited in the lyrics of “Camp-Fire”: “If you can conjure up a campfire in the back of your mind/ If you’re looking through a mirror, too, a friend is what you’ll find.”

A flair for storytelling and theatrical orchestration and staging is their strength, but be warned— Starling Electric is not the type of band to inspire a lukewarm response. The Darling Starlings as they are often called, also have a reputation for artistic prickliness. Starling Electric has allegedly been banned from one popular venue and trouble seems to follow them as naturally as a dog’s tail follows a dog. Somehow, Starling Electric seems to have attracted very vocal haters along with their strong fan base but they don’t look worried and they shouldn’t be. As the old saying goes: “No one kicks a dying dog.”

It’s very likely that a cult following of “Darling Starling” lovers will lap up their future records like an ice-cream lover on a Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia binge. Regardless of whether you love this album or hate it there’s no denying that Clouded Staircase is like a time machine trip back to the psychedelic 60s and 70s.

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