Monday 27/02/06 Stellastarr*, The Morning After Girls @ The Barfly, Liverpool

There is something unsettling about watching a band you can’t actually see when you’re looking straight at them. The Morning After Girls are swathed in dry ice and barely backlit so that all you can see is a line of silhouettes, the black uniform doesn’t help much either. It’s just feels a little alienating. Aiming for the ethereal they are surprisingly reminiscent of Oasis, albeit a post-rock Oasis, it’s a little bizarre but there’s definitely some potential there. 

How great are Stellastarr* - they’re the likeable face of current New York rock music. They’re not overly trendy, or angular, so have less distractions from their ace songs with lots of ba ba baa’s you can jump about to, and then their slightly more downbeat ones you can find a beard to stroke to while appreciating. 

It’s been a good two years since their self-titled debut, and they haven’t been particularly visible since, so its nice to have them back with the carousel of 'My Coco' and the uh uh ohh’s of Jenny (why do they get all the songs?). So to the new songs, of which this reviewer can remember nothing at all. Whether that’s because it was the first time they’d been played to those ears, or because they were just forgettable is very debatable, but they just weren’t as catchy and upbeat as the old stuff. They didn’t have the little drum rolls that go round your head for days. It seems a bit more introspective and a shade darker. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the songs may need time to grow, but hopefully they haven’t forgotten what they were so good at.