Video Review: Foxygen - …And Star Power
By Tony Cardwell, Contributor
[Jagjaguwar; 2014]
Rating: 7/10
Key Tracks: “How Can You Really,” “Star Power III: What Are We Good For,” “I Don’t Have Anything/The Gate”
Foxygen released one of my favorite albums of last year, We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, which combined psych, pop, country, garage and classic rock into this weird amalgamation that came like a breath of fresh air. So naturally when Foxygen’s newest project …And Star Power was announced, I lost my marbles.
I am happy to report that …And Star Power doesn’t disappoint… mostly. I love Foxygen because of its classic rock sound and these influences shine through and through on this record. Others like Foxygen for its its crazy jumping from sound to sound and its very unapologetic, minimalistic production value, but these features aren’t nearly as prominent.
There’s also something to get out of the way quickly: This album is 24 songs, one hour and 21 minutes long, listed as a double LP. The excessive run time is incredibly tedious when viewing the record holistically.
…And Star Power has a very distinct start, middle and end, the middle being the “Star Power” series. The beginning of the record, as well as the “Star Power” series, all sounds extremely tight and crisp. The production on the record’s front side is impressive and very different from Foxygen’s previous work.
In the past, Foxygen had a tendency to leap from composition to composition within a song, making the track sound completely different every other minute. On …And Star Power, the group does not follow its previously established formula.
Take “How Can You Really,” which sounds like a Todd Rundgren single, consisting of all '70s pop rock nostalgia and I love it. The song exemplifies Foxygen’s new production style: tight and fluid yet still very much classic.
Realistically this can be said for the three other tracks that prelude the “Star Power” series. “Coulda Been My Love” sounds like a slowed down version of ELO’s “Do Ya;” “You And I,” the final track before the “Star Power” series, seeps with classic radio greatness.
However, all the classic music praise doesn’t end with the first five tracks. Oh, no! The album really hits a high point with the aforementioned “Star Power” series. The series is a set of four tracks all entitled “Star Power” and all four are just as impressive as the preceeding five songs. They ooze with influences of B-sides from ‘60s and ‘70s records and are glorious, with the ‘star’ of the collection being “Star Power III: What Are We Good For.”
The latter half of the record is completely devoted to insane randomness. This isn’t a bad thing; in fact two of my favorite songs, “I Don’t Have Anything/The Gate” and “666,” both come from the back 15 songs. There are oddballs on this backend though, such as the very Napoleon Dynamite-esque “Wally’s Farm” and noisy “Cold Winter/Freedom,” in which the band achieves nothing but loud reverberations.
…And Star Power achieves what I feel like it was meant to do--provide a quality follow-up to We Are The… while also bringing something new to the table. Never has Foxygen made such a classic sounding record and that’s saying something. Yet the group keeps all these songs fresh, which makes them that much more enticing. Despite all of this, the 24-track length is a massive turnoff.
