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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Starflyer 59

[#] The Fashion Focus (1998)

Reviewed April 28, 2018

Cars whizzing past in the nighttime.

Jason Martin is concerned with very little. He drives a lot, falls in love a lot, plays card games a lot. As Jason Martin is wont to do, he writes songs about these things, but in proving he's not indie's most eccentric songwriter, he proves he's indie's most economic. The leadoff track on Starflyer's The Fashion Focus, "I Drive a Lot", sums up the wistfulness that comes from being at the bottom in five lines over upbeat, strumming acoustics and prominent keyboards. The Fashion Focus is an exit ramp off from the genuinely heavy, loungy shoegaze that defined Silver and Gold. Chalk it up to aging gracefully or all-fundamentals songwriting, but this album stands tall alongside them.

The rest of the album keeps the steady, low-key, nighttime atmosphere, though Jason reminds us that he can still choke us with walls of guitars on "Too Much Fun". Some would call it out of place, and maybe that's true, but the songwriting is so consistent that it's hardly an issue. Elsewhere, Jason writes the finest Christmas in July song ever laid to tape ("A Holiday Song"), likens the dark to death in the catchiest way possible ("Sundown"), and gets in his traditional one awkward Christianity reference per album ("Days of Lamech"). If there's anything Jason's songs lack, it's usually endings--"All the Time" is a chorus looking for a song, and a mind-numbing refrain to match the road he's been on for the last couple of hours.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Sundown", "The Fashion Focus", "Too Much Fun"	"I Drive a Lot"	"All the Time"

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