Stellar* – The Best Of (Sony) CD Review

January 11, 2011

Tom Baileyโ€™s liner notes eloquently and perhaps a tad generously sum up the groupโ€™s pop merits. Certainly, his production made the most of their merits; without his sugar-lemon coating, the Stellar* sound would have been grounded in a mundane rock groove. What Bailey teased out were those pure pop moments, the hooky choruses, and added just a dab of experimentation โ€“ especially those lovely dub effects that you barely notice, but add so much.

Unfortunately, Stellar* were never innately great, and theyโ€™re not aging well. Under Baileyโ€™s production of their biggest tracks is a camouflaged pedestrian rock group, which breaks out on later (sans Bailey) material from the latter part of the decade.

Why release a Stellar* โ€˜best ofโ€™ in 2010? This is very hit-and-miss, and it surely makes more sense just to buy the first couple of albums, where their strengths, not their obvious weaknesses, were identified dressed in finery. GARY STEEL

Sound = 3.5

Music = 2.5

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Steel has been penning his pungent prose for 40 years for publications too numerous to mention, most of them consigned to the annals of history. He is Witchdoctor's Editor-In-Chief/Music and Film Editor. He has strong opinions and remains unrepentant. Steel's full bio can be found here

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