At what point does a best new band just become a best band? That’s what we’re wondering today (August 16) as we dance naked around the proverbial fire to Velvet Starlings’ galactic groove of a new tune called “Turning Point.” The Los Angeles band — who we’ve hyped quite a bit on these digital pages — release new album Pacific Standard Time later this month, and we’re told it “marks the debut of a newer, sharper iteration of Velvet Starlings.”
So we’re right back in the new category, and that’s quite alright. Because “Turning Point” is a organ-dancing psychedelic garage belter that snakes and swirls as it aches and twirls, modernizing a ’60s retro sound that could bring back some bite to Los Angeles’ Disneyfied pastures. It could be about climate change, or it could be about a relationship gone south. It could be about both.
Velvet Starlings’ 20-year old multi-instrumentalist prodigy Christian Gisborne breaks it down with uncertain certainty: “At the time I wrote it, I was thinking about climate change – we’re at a point where we could either start trying to fix it now and if we don’t, it could be too late. Or you could look at it like you’re in a relationship that’s on the rocks.”
Dig it.