This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Overwrought mope-pop is still toppermost of the poppermost in jolly olde these days. And Starsailor — a quartet of pasty-faced melancholics if there ever were — are the latest batch of scruffy lads to be anointed the Greatest Thing Since … um, Travis.
Which means they have a frontman whose yearning voice breaks as if he’s going to burst into tears at any second; a band that plays as if they’re struggling not to wake the folks in the next bedsit; and song after song about pain and lies and grief and woe and love that’s gone horribly, irretrievably wrong. But — surprise! — underneath that, there’s something undeniably intriguing about Starsailor. Less lilting and more angular than their peers, these boys possess a grand, tragic beauty that infuses cuts like the bleak Alcoholic and the lush Talk Her Down with a vibrant energy far more affecting than the sulking that now passes for pop. Plus singer James Walsh reminds you a bit of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and that’s always a good thing. So they might not be the greatest band to come along lately, but at least they’re not the worst.
