Friday, November 15, 2013

Band Review: Sail By The Stars


Sail By The Stars was actually up for review two weeks ago, and I realized it sounded so similar to the other band Jocelyn, that the reviews would bleed too much into each other, so I bumped Sail By The Stars out. I didn't notice until this week that Sail By The Stars also has a song that echoes a musical phrase found in "Love Drunk" (Boys Like Girls). Clearly, I made the right decision in separating them.
(In this case, the phrase pops up in "April Showers Bring May Flowers".)
That being said, listening to them two weeks apart, they sound fairly different. Sail By The Stars does not veer into country at all. It is the solo project of Josh K, and he describes it as sunny pop/rock. That sounds about right. Often acoustic, there is a little bit of a folk feel at times, but very much via pop, with songs based on relationships.
I don't know that I would have come up with "sunny" on my own, because there is often a plaintive feeling, but the tone is generally optimistic, and always earnest. I think fans of Owl City would appreciate the music.
The primary shortcoming is a sense of sameness from one song to another, with similar subject matter and vocal patterns. Part of this may be a natural result of the band consisting of a single person. There may be some similarities to Dashboard Confessional too, actually, but Sail By The Stars is definitely more sunny than that.
Music is available via iTunes.

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