Brightest Young Things

After some years of inactivity I lost interest in keeping up with stellastarr*, which led to eventually forgetting about them all together. Then came the day when I saw their name on Rock n Roll's calendar and I was quite pleased to see that there is a still pulse in the band. It wasn't until I stepped foot in door that I recalled having last seen them at this very venue.

So, I had one band still wait through until stellastarr* would take the stage. As eager as I was to finally see what had come of them, my wait wasn't all too painful. Wild Light seemed like the little cousins of the headliners and they definitely had their act together. I am used to seeing an older crowd at these shows, but it was Wild Light who drew out the younger girlies. Their catchy grooves in pretty much every song the entire front row screaming for more. I don't know what they put in their sound, but there is something in there that made a brigade of GW girlies weak in the knees and I felt like I was taking my kid sister to a Backstreet Boys concert. It was hard telling if they were already good 'n drunk or they were digging the band that much. My vote goes with the latter seeing as how I had never heard of them and I was already eying the merch booth for their goodies.

The age groups in the forward rows went a through a bit of shift in preparation for the slightly more seasoned stellastarr* as if someone rang a bell to signal shift change. Thank god! All familiar faces in the band. I was almost counting on seeing at least one or two replacements considering I hadn't heard anything from them in a while. Then I started asking myself how much new material would they play and how many slots on the set list would be left for old songs. And let me tell you, it was pretty much an even mix of the self-titled and "Civilized", their first and third records respectively. In fact the first two tracks they played were from "Civilized", which they announced that only had been released a week ago. Once they hit number three on the list with "No Weather" mood shifted from a nice mellow beginning to a groovy punky dance atmosphere with excitement level growing and demanding more.

This was met when "Sweet Troubled Soul" came blasting through the monitors. At that point there wasn't anybody who didn't have a good excuse for not dancing. The night continued with new and older tunes until Shawn announced "Jenny". The crowd could barely contain themselves. After a short break, which I guess was for their planned encore, the party picked back up. And to top things off, and to no big surprise, stellastarr* rewarded audience with a heavily desired "My Coco". I am pretty sure that everyone that night got everything they were hoping for. There was not a single disappointed face leaving the building.