introvertthere's a line in a recent interview with sean macleod that tells you almost everything about 'that's when the earth becomes a star'. asked how his sound has changed across three decades of writing, he says: "as long as the chorus is catchy i don't look for much more." this from a man with a phd in music composition from the university of limerick, who has written books on phil spector and the girl groups of the sixties, and who cheerfully admits that microtonal music "has found its way into some of the songs on the new album". the gap between those two sentences is where his fifth record lives.
it took three years to finish. he wrote and recorded an entirely different album in the middle of it, out next year, because he couldn't get these ones to gel. you can hear the patience. this is a record about alienation, technology, consumerism and the business of finding meaning when everything is designed to stop you, and it carries all of that without once sounding like homework. ten tracks, and he never mistakes the ideas for the songs.
'take control (don't let 'em)' opens it, lush and layered, indie songwriting with proper power-pop poise, and it sets out the album's argument before the album has really started: make the thing for its own sake, and don't let anyone talk you into making it for theirs. we love the line 'if money is your art, it may not serve your heart'.
then 'inside out', the single, and the right choice for one. brooding guitars over an indie-rock groove that knows exactly where it's going, with shimmering banks of vocals stacked over the top. underneath that it's a meditation on modern identity, but macleod keeps the song in front of the idea rather than the other way round. that's the whole trick of this record in one track, and it's why it works.
'let the light in' is perhaps the most beatles-esque thing here musically, with a lovely rhodes running all the way through it. then 'who unchained the earth from the sun?' pulls everything back: acoustic, stark, no harmonies to hide behind. it works as a palate cleanser, and it clears the ground for the best thing on the album.
because 'when the earth becomes a star' is an out and out stunner. macleod's strongest song here by a distance, and one of our favourite tracks of the year, no qualifiers. we wrote about it on its own when it landed in our new picks back in september, and it's the song that pulled us toward the rest of the record.
'i know not' is all percussive and jingly, with a lovely bit of dissonance sitting in it before the whole thing soars into a kinks-esque chorus. 'illuminate' comes in on acoustic again and then finds an almost baggy groove, and it's good to hear the rhythmic side of this record switched up like that.
'give 'em what they want' has great chords and a refrain of 'give what they want, give what they need' that never quite tells you who it's aimed at, which is what leaves it feeling uneasy. there's a lovely nod to 'new gold dream' in there as well. 'we're not afraid anymore' is another groovy one, and the lyric in the coda is the best bit of it.
'goodbye' closes things in style, slow and anthemic and quite openly apocalyptic, in an almost mew-like way, or mercury rev at their most expansive. it's a big, generous ending to a record that has spent thirty-eight minutes refusing to be only one thing.
macleod is from scarriff, was a founding member of the dublin band cisco, and has been writing and recording for more than thirty years. he lists the beatles, the kinks, the beach boys and dylan alongside the classical composers, and he's as interested in drones from early classical and indian music as he is in a hook. there's a companion project, 'we don't see that we don't see', about how we actually hear things: tuning, timbre, the instruments themselves. and there's another album, 'magic', already finished and due in 2027.
what makes 'that's when the earth becomes a star' worth your time is that none of that scholarship is load-bearing. you can hear the alternative tunings if you're listening for them and miss them entirely if you're not, and the songs work either way. three years is a long time to spend getting ten tracks to gel. he got them there. an ambitious record from someone with nothing left to prove and no intention of coasting, and we're very glad to have found it.