Starfire Releases New Music

Rockers took themselves far too seriously just a generation ago, and the entire genre suffered for it. Gone is the pretentiousness of that era in the new album Dreaming of Your Destiny by Starfire, and in its place, we find a zeal for big riffs and captivating grooves that has the potential to rock the underground all spring long. There’s not a lot of ego to come between artists and audience in tracks like “This Wonderful Moment” and “I Can’t Deny;” this is, after all, a band more interested in the music than the materialisms their peers care for, and that makes this quite the interesting release indeed. 

There’s not a spot of blushing in the hooks we hear in “Girl Watcher,” “Get Ready (Here I Come)” and “Do You Dare,” but instead a muscularity to the musicianship that never sounds over-rehearsed or forced from the band. On the contrary, there’s so much lust for the climax of all three of these songs that one has to wonder just how powerful they would sound as a medley in a live performance. Starfire seems like a group that might feel caged when they’re not on the stage, but they do their best to bring the concert energy to these tracks. 

Any need for synthetics is eliminated early on in songs like “Owner of This Heart” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” and were they present in the mix over the organic harmonies that drive these tracks home, I don’t know that Dreaming of Your Destiny would sound like the winning affair it does in this instance. To me, Starfire is a band that can’t exist in the watered-down mainstream – they’ve got to be blazing their own path with loud, proud instrumental prowess, and that’s what makes this record such a unique listen next to its counterparts in rock right now. 

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The straightforward attack used in “Get Up and Move,” “Into the Night,” and “Hooked on a Feeling” really counts for something in Dreaming of Your Destiny, comparable to what the lyrics are lending every stitch of music in the foreground. The presence that the instruments have next to the vocal is always evenhanded, but Starfire doesn’t mind turning up the heat on a riff if it has the potential to make a bigger statement than words ever could. Give and take is a part of making a band work, and this group has it down to a science here. 

I was expecting to be wowed by Dreaming of Your Destiny just because of the love that Starfire has been getting from the indie press lately, but I didn’t expect to find the full-court expressiveness of this material to be as accessible and thoughtful as it is in this incarnation. There are only a few other rock bands trying to make the same kind of engaging music that this crew is so handily in Dreaming of Your Destiny, but of those that have captured my interest in 2022, none have had the charisma of these players. 

Michael Rand