Justin Glanville - Blue Stars (CD)

All Music Guide

On Blue Stars, New Yorker (by way of Cleveland) Justin Glanville makes pretty, pretty indie pop with rootsy flourishes. He has a knack with uncanny pop turns of melody that calls to mind Joe Pernice of the Pernice Brothers; in fact, Bruce Tull from Pernice's old unit, the Scud Mountain Boys, plays steel here. But Glanville also possesses a sort of weighty poetic darkness that is much like that of the similarly hardtocategorize Richard Buckner. On Blue Stars, the delightful pop bounce of "Don't Get Me Wrong" is undercut by the ominously dark, sophisticated "After the Nighttime." Elsewhere, Glanville makes you suck in your breath with stirring beauty and lyrics that seek transcendence from emotional burden: the slow, burning "Headlong" and "Nobody Had to Say It" serve as the best examples of this. Occasionally, however, Glanville overextends himself. "There's a River" gets all Bacharach, loose and jazzy, a pose that doesn't work as well as Glanville's more alternapop numbers, which seem ...his more natural inclination. The Richard Thompsonlike folk workout "Light of the Moon" also feels more like an exercise. Nevertheless, these minor missteps are only apparent in sharp relief to the sometimes blinding beauty of the rest of this excellent album. - Erik Hage, All Music Guide Read more Less