Stars Like Fleas is a Brooklyn-based collective of musicians you probably haven’t heard of from bands you probably have heard of (especially if you’re a regular to 3hive). At the nucleus are Montgomery Knott (vocals) and Shannon Fields (everything else). It was Shannon who emailed us to say that Stars Like Fleas will be releasing their third album after “a fair bit of wandering-in-the-desert time.” That’s gotta be some kind of crazy metaphor ’cause they recorded the album in Iceland—with Bjork’s producer, Valgeir Sigurðsson—and I don’t think there are any deserts there. Wherever it was that they wandered, they appear to have lost their penchant for unstructured, free jazz compositions and replaced it with a knack for lushly-orchestrated pop epics. The single, “I Was Only Dancing,” is a precise audio replication of a cloudburst falling on parched earth, sandwiched between slices of warm sunlight. Bathe/bask in it and you’ll see why it’s already one of my favorites of the year.
www.home-tapes.com
www.praemedia.com
myspace.com/starslikefleas