Airy and cold
E. A Solinas | MD USA | 04/07/2004
(3 out of 5 stars)
"A lot of albums start off on their strongest songs, to suck people in so they will listen to the rest. Not so with Crushed Stars' "Self Navigation," where the opener is among the weakest. It's a clumsy misfire in an album of pretty but rather passionless pop songs.After starting off slow with the meandering "Liza in Silver" and crystalline "Letters To Munich," the album speeds up with snowflakey ballads ("Ever Since Autumn," the plaintive "Gordon"), percussion-y pop (the hookless "Exit Wound") and distant space-pop (the ethereal "Outside the Stars Are Falling"). Everything rounds off on a horn-augmented musical trip in "Walkabout."The feeling of "Self Navigation" is cold, airy and sparkly, like little bits of frozen stars. And Crushed Stars is at its best when it sticks to that formula. It stumbles on the more prosaic tracks like the depressing "Tow Truck," but blossoms at the beginning and ends with more ethereal pop songs. "Outside the Stars Are Falling" has what sounds like winter wind underlying the slow guitar plucking.Vocalist Todd Gautreau does not have a great voice. It's not a bad voice, but it fails to mesh with the wispy, crystalline music. He lacks the quirkiness or vibrance that could make them come alive. And the songwriting is a mixed bag, melancholy little ditties that occasionally dip into obvious rhyming schemes ("She looks just like her mother/looks just like a film star/there will be no other/quite the way you are")."Self Navivation" is best described as a stargazing album, a pretty little collection of airy pop songs. Just stick to Crushed Stars' cold little ballads and skip the pop."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1