If, for some reason, you're in search of a savior in these relatively fertile times for underground music, For Stars may be more than happy to oblige. ...It Falls Apart, the band's fourth full-length, has arrived, quavering vocals, organ dirges, and bubbling synths ablaze. Sonically overwhelming throughout its eight tracks, the album affirms the enduring significance of alt-rock's most pervasive clichés. As such, the album feels important, but behind its earnest and not-so-clever ruse lies little more than well-articulated fluff.
For Stars seem to be angling for a happy medium, and in some ways, they achieve it. Like Radiohead without the intellectuality and studio precision, or Grandaddy without the endearing sloppiness, the California group hover between stylistic opposites, trying ardently to grasp both extremes, but ultimately fail to match the scale of their unrealistic ambitions. ...It Falls Apart is essentially a mottled amalgam of alt-rock truisms, overloaded with grandiose piano ballads, backwound guitars and glistening synths.
The record can be viewed a historical tribute of sorts, as virtually every song closely (and perhaps accidentally) approximates one or more of rock's most widely canonized artists, to the point that a track-by-track litany could be recited. Listening from that perspective, sadly, does little to absolve the album of its abundant faults: Most devout music fans have already heard all the bands For Stars ape, and in their shadow, this group is revealed as a feeble doppelganger, tiredly reiterating moot points for which only the most gluttonous listeners will reserve patience.
The jig is up from the get-go. Opener "I Should Have Told You" recasts Radiohead in the wan light of airy American orchestral pop, riding an OK Computer-nostalgic riff over a well-trodden ground of arena rock piano and painfully over-affected vocals. Equally ludicrous are Carlos Forster's lyrics, chief among which is the refrain, "I took her down/ And I made her cry." And as if that acerbic salvo wasn't enough, "Calm Down Baby" impedes the point with the devastating chorus, "Friends again/ You're just my friend again/ There's a million things I'd rather be than your friend." A breakup album if nothing else, ...It Falls Apart adheres to its role consistently and appropriately, a lot like, say, Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered.
It Falls Apart isn't completely devoid of pleasurable moments-- just severely lacking in them. Pinioned by a four-on-the-floor drumbeat, "It Doesn't Really Matter" avoids disintegrating in For Stars' typically overzealous wall of sound, allowing listeners a rare chance to appreciate Forster's lilting vocals and the band's amply reverbed guitar fronts. Here, when the usual monotony begins creeping in near the two-minute mark, in comes a sultry trumpet break, performed subtly and limberly enough not to deluge the song in cheese. Unfortunately, it's back to the piano and more spiritless love ballads from there.
What For Stars lack in originality they overcompensate for in emotionality. I have no doubts about Forster's sincerity when he belts lyrics like, "Make me a sailboat/ And put me in a bottle/ 'Cause I got a dream/ Of seeing the sea"-- and that's the troubling part. His simplistic, declaratory verses are par for the course in pop music, but when they're presented as quixotically as on the maudlin "Calm Down Baby", they cease to merely be part of the mix and grow intrusive. And on the grand scale of pop music history, For Stars are certainly very unobtrusive, but there's nothing more unnecessary than callow attempts like this to mask something that's already been done masterfully as an original statement. It's one thing when cover bands make unabashed efforts to eulogize the work of others, but there are few things so obnoxious and ill-fated as when a group borrows established motifs and attempts to brand them as their own.
In fairness, Forster does have one thing right: On the soporific, Pink Floyd-copping ballad "Shattered Glass", he observes, "This is no ordinary world." If only For Stars were successful at abiding that verity in their music, we might be talking a much different game.
