Stars On E.S.P.

The lore behind Stars On E.S.P. is attractive in its own right – apparently, the album’s loosely conceptualised as a collection of imagined singles for ‘60s New York avant-jazz-folk-beatnik label ESP-Disk’ – but the result’s more expansive than that remit. If this album’s predecessor, Mouth By Mouth, felt lighter, less deliberate than early His Name Is Alive, Stars On E.S.P. is where the strings snap and Warren Defever’s songwriting goes into genre free fall. Lead single “Universal Frequencies” is Beach Boys by the book, a faded photocopy of “Good Vibrations”; elsewhere, there’s downhome folk, splatter-dub sonics, girl group pop (“Country Girl” is one of Defever’s finest pop songs)… but to its credit, Stars On E.S.P. is never a mess; it’s a phantasmagoria of possibility. No wonder it’s also a love letter, of sorts, to AM radio (the vinyl edition’s mixed in mono for the full experience.)