Whether they’re fleshing out a melodic color becoming all too rare in rock n’ roll today in “Girl Watcher” or crushing us with a sizeable strength not often employed enough by their contemporaries ala “Get Ready (Here I Come),” the guitars that Starfire is using to illustrate their most powerful emotions in the new album Dreaming of Your Destiny are one of the main features in the record’s tracklist. Although Starfire isn’t skimping on anything here, be it vocal charm, lyrical wit, or just plain production quality in general, this is a guitar lover’s absolute dream, and there’s scarcely a moment in Dreaming of Your Destiny where this band isn’t making that perfectly clear to anyone who happens to be listening.
The energy these players afford the rhythm of the music in “Owner of This Heart,” “Get Up and Move,” “Everybody Plays the Fool” and “I Can’t Deny” is really intense, but it doesn’t steal anything from the lyrical narratives in these tracks. On the contrary, I think that Starfire is doing most of their storytelling through the potency of the beat in a lot of this material, reinforcing to us just how multidimensional an approach to communication they’re willing to take when the mood suits the music. I’ve been hearing a lot of bands experiment with their depth in myriad ways, but this is one of the first acts I’ve encountered in 2022 as devoted to puritan concepts as they are growing and evolving their sound well within the length of a single song.
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There’s a much-needed oomph from the backend produced in “I Can’t Sleep,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” putting an exceptional kick into the music that inarguably makes the latter two covers all the more original than they would have sounded to begin with. Rather than going through the motions that a lot of their biggest influences did, Starfire is taking the framework of old-guard rock n’ roll and trying to put their own unique stamp on it here, which is rather different from some of the outright attempts at making a throwback their contemporaries have presented in the last few years. This is original and not a forced performance of classic rock by any measurement.
I can’t wait to hear what Starfire is going to do next, but judging from the likes of “Do You Dare” and “This Wonderful Moment,” I like the direction they’re taking this sound in. There’s no debating whether or not rock still has some life to it in 2022, because just taking a look at some of the fresh talent coming out of the underground will show you that there’s still plenty of vitality left within the genre, and this is largely because of the drive bands like Starfire are putting forth in their new material. Dreaming of Your Destiny is an ace work, and perhaps just what this act needs to claw out of the underground and into the mainstream spotlight they’ve been coveting.
Rachel Townsend