Austin-based band Star Parks' sophomore album The New Sounds of Late Capitalism is out now via Modern Outsider (order). Today the band has shared the official video for "Palm Sunday," the latest single from the album, with Flood Magazine. Star Parks' Andrew Bianculli tells Flood, "Director Vanessa Pla lives in Austin, Texas and is self-taught in her craft. She has been shooting on film for three years. When Star Parks came to her for a video, she was very excited to travel into a parallel dimension to capture real live working class gnomes. She tried very hard not to interfere with their lives and was only intending to observe their culture."
Star Parks will be playing several shows this month in Austin as well as a show in San Antonio at The Lonesome Rose. Upcoming shows are listed below.
Star Parks is hard to pin down. Since the release of their 2016 debut Don't Dwell the band has grown into a 7 piece mini-orchestra, a far throw from its beginnings as a solo act of the group's principle songwriter, Andy Bianculli. Touring France and Ireland as a solo artist in early 2016, Bianculli caught the attention of Dublin based label, Paper Trail Records when a mutual friend heard the then unreleased album and passed it along to Jack Rainey and Dan Finnegan at Paper Trail. In April of 2016, the band released their first single Theoretical Girls. A somber ballad of unrequited love and disrupted fates. It was featured prominently on playlists as one of the best indie and undiscovered singles of the year.
In May, the LP Don't Dwell was released. Bandcamp described the album as "erudite chamber pop that hearkens back to the elegant and experimental production of the 1960s, swinging from melancholia to playfulness." Star Parks, now a four piece with Keith Lough on drums, Ben Burdick on bass and Nathaniel Klugman on keyboards, embarked on a tour of France, Ireland and the United Kingdom in support. The group would later add trumpet player, Derek Phelps and trombonist Wayne Myers later that year. In July 2017 the group released a new song, this time with producer and engineer Danny Reisch (Shearwater, Other Lives). They released The Past is Like a Foreign Country and started work on what would become their follow up LP.
The band's sophomore album The New Sounds of Late Capitalism was recorded again with Reisch, now located in Lockhart, Texas, it is a record about alienation, dissatisfaction and postmodernism. "I found an old Concord reel to reel in my parent's attic in New York and when I played the tape it was my father as a 12-year-old boy recording the The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show off the television" explains Bianculli. "There are so many layers to that discovery that affected me and made me contemplate my place in time, my family, America, culture and music." "To me it was like discovering the spark that gave man fire, in that it is a first hand account of a moment that propelled me and the whole world in a different direction." "I knew I wanted to write about moments like that, that had promise but inevitably lead to disappointment." Reisch played a pivotal role in helping the band shape the sound of the new album, which at its heart was an attempt to reproduce a time where studios could employ dozens of musicians and keep orchestras on hand. Without such resources, the band developed what they called "Burt Bacharach on a budget". The band cites exotica legends Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman as major influences as well as Ethiopian organist Hailu Mergia, Van Dyke Parks, Kevin Ayers and Alice Coltrane.
Watch the video for "Palm Sunday" below.
Star Parks Tour Dates:
March 12th - San Antonio, TX @ The Lonesome Rose - 9pm (tickets)
March 18th - Austin, TX @ Sahara Lounge - 10pm
March 21 - Austin, TX @ Southby Schmouthby @ The Butterfly Bar and the Vortex - All Day (RSVP)
March 27th - Austin, TX @ The Pershing - 9pm
