Grade: 90/100
Foxygen’s new album “…And Star Power” brings together ’60s Brit-pop with modern indie-rock sensibilities in a youthful, yet nostalgic way.
The album contains 24 songs, separated into four parts. The first part contains some of the band’s catchiest songs to date. The second track, “How Can You Really” sounds like an early song by the Byrds or the Beatles, an emblem of the singer’s appeal to an audience of teenage girls.
Still, it’s not a bad song. The ringing ride cymbals and catchy melodies set the stage for a message of the sadness in separation. In fact, themes of separation are all over the album.
The third track, “Coulda Been My Love,” is very much in the same vein, lamenting at the loss of a beloved girl. Love and loss is definitely not new to Foxygen, but this album is preoccupied with these themes more than ever before.
The fourth track, “Cosmic Vibrations” has warm organ sounds underlying deeper vocals than elsewhere on the album. With this song, Foxygen jumps farther into their psychedelic side with reverb and wobbling guitar notes. The song picks up at the end with the pressing question, “Where do we go to become friends?”
The second part of the album is called the “Star Power Suite.” It’s a spacy arrangement in four movements, employing mallet percussion instruments and effects to achieve a lost feeling. The third of the four movements explores the purpose of life, asking “What are we good for if we can’t make it?”
Foxygen seems to be moving away from a celebration of life and into the necessary philosophical questions that plague us all eventually, which is certainly a sign of the band’s evolution.
The third and fourth parts of the album aren’t so distinct from the first, but there are some great songs represented here. The 12th track, “666” has upbeat drums that combine with guitars, a mandolin and yelled vocals in a high-energy, confusing party that definitely fits with the song’s title.
The 18th track, “Can’t Contextualize My Mind” sounds like a mixture of Link Wray’s famous electric guitar driven “Rumble” and old blues vocalist Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell On You.”
The album ends with “Hang,” a tremolo-ed out farewell to the listener. The song puts together parts of what the band was exploring in the rest of the album in a really interesting way.
Overall, this is a great album that provides catchy melodies, but never gets so pop as to offend any hip pop-hating listener. Foxygen is changing, while keeping a strong hold on its roots. “…And Star Power” is definitely worth a proper listen.