Typically when we think of rock music, the first elements that come to mind right off the bat are loud guitars, anthemic vocals, and an arena-shaking groove that feels as endeared to blues music as it does a much more modern style of play. While all of these components are present and in action in Dreaming of Your Destiny, it’s hard to say that they’re presented with the kind of typicality that has become the bane of contemporary rock even at its most refined and polished.
Starfire is out to incorporate a little bit of raw adrenaline with a progressive undertow that will leave a lot of unaware listeners begging for more of their play, and in Dreaming of Your Destiny, I think they’re able to meld enough of the past glories of rock n’ roll with the future’s undeniably experimental outlook for the genre to make something that is unquestionably theirs and theirs alone. It’s hard to beat the kind of classic rock chest-beating that they’re offering us in tracks like “Owner of This Heart,” “Into the Night,” and their rousing cover of “Hooked on a Feeling,” and whether a newbie to the style or not, this feels like the perfect spring record this year.
While the values of their songcraft are planted firmly on the old school side of the spectrum, there’s nothing retro about the enthusiasm that this band has for the material they’re playing. We’re never listening to a group of players that could pass for a bar band, but instead the kind of tight circle that usually makes music purely for the fun of it as opposed to for profession.
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The overwhelming physicality of songs like “Girl Watcher” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” is balanced by a fleeting sense of simplicity around the corner from “Get Ready (Here I Come),” “I Can’t Deny,” and even the lush “Do You Dare,” and I think Starfire wanted this element of their new LP to be a source of communicative contrast. It’s something a lot of their rivals are failing to do when they get into the studio, and yet it’s pushing some of the greatest percussive and melodic eruptions you’re going to hear in either half of Dreaming of Your Destiny.
There’s no time like the present to get into Starfire and their music, and I think that based on where they’ve been able to take their reputation just in the build-up to this album’s release, we’re going to start hearing a lot more about them from other areas beyond the American underground. They’re not selling their souls to the plastic gods of the music industry in Dreaming of Your Destiny, but they’re definitely aligning themselves with a selection of elite musicians in rock today responsible for bringing the genre into the next generation the right way. There’s not as much purity in rock n’ roll anymore, and to some extent I think this band is taking advantage of the void and making the cleanest, most thoroughly energetic rock to debut in a long while here.
Clay Burton