Capture the stars, what a poetic image! A dreamy feat suggests the title of Greta Van Fleet’s third studio album. A family more than a group, guys with a fire inside, fueled by an inner passion for the 70s. Like all bands, they learn to play the songs of their idols, imitate them liturgically, with expanded playing talent. It doesn’t take long for them to be noticed in their Frankenmuth, a small rural community in Michigan. “While you’re having fun I’m going to chop wood for Mrs. Gretna Van Fleet.” this is how Hauk’s grandfather greets him after taking him to his friends’ garage, to Colon’s house set up as a rehearsal room. The spark for Josh removes the obsessive H, and this name becomes perfect, a metaphor for the image of Gretna’s grandmother, it feels an unconditional love for things with an ancient taste. In Guts’ house, they collect records that have gone down in the history of music, from jazz to blues and rock, a kind of dedication to the brothers in their listening: Josh sings, imitates, plays the part that he likes, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, god; his twin Jake plays the guitar, he is inspired by The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, Cream, The Rolling Stones, powerful magic for them these English sounds:”I wonder if I could create anything by playing with all this music“. They are joined by their younger brother Sam on bass and classmate Kyle Hawk on drums. It’s 2012, Jake is impatient, he wants to start a band. Shortly after Hawk’s departure, he was replaced by his friend Danny Wagner. Jake was 12 years old when he was given a real guitar, which he first picked up for fun when he was 3 years old. He loves Gibson Les Pauls, he’s as ambitious as Josh and they’re cramped, leaving Frankenmouth and moving to Nashville in 2020. of German origin. Jake wants at all costs to reproduce the exact sound of the British masters, the obsession, the meaning of life to be a rock star, to be carried away by an imaginary time machine and revive those virgin revolutionary emotions, a mystical mission, “in the name of god”, as if they were in a movie The Blues Brothers, with the goal of saving rock, with the exact intention of going back to where it all began. Modernity is demonic in all its aspects, including technological ones, to be burned at the stake, like a witch, to let nostalgic, hopeful feelings triumph, decomposing the dizziness of progress. Weird way Josh uses to inspire writing.”I walked only to go and sit in the graveyard and soak up the energy, letting the environment control the subconscious“. Ideas, reflections, both cosmic and intimate concepts, human, ephemeral, ghostly, like those shooting stars that need to be caught. Esoteric themes that merge with everyday life are the protagonists of the lyrics, they are told in a manner of conceptual evolutions that are more personal than sonic: “I like to weave tapestries with lyrics, making connections to what I’ve written on previous albums.“. They go to record this latest work live at RCA Studios in Nashville, they breathe history, a sacred place where you can feel the spirit of those who made music history. In 2016, he was taken in by producer David Cobb, a master of recreating raw, natural analog sounds, fascinated by the techniques used in the 70s and 60s by the Beatles, loved by Slash, Sammy Hagar and Lady Gaga. They rely on Cobb, leaving Greg Kurstin (Foo Fighters, Beck, Katy Perry) also built on The Battle At Garden’s Gate better to go back to basics, as Sam said:Conceptually, “Starcatcher” goes back to our origins, in our garage, with the pure energy of sound.“. Jake’s instruments are schizophrenic: he abandons classic Marshalls for an endless series of small Fender combos, he experiments with new tunings, he alternates them from open C to DADGAD, he is obsessive, surgical in search. for uniqueness, I work on the instrument in priority, not on the composition. You can’t count the guitars, how many there are, if he borrows them from the Chicago Music Exchange, he changes them for every song! Why add reverb and digital effects when you just need to move the mics away from the amps and let the environment do its thing? Without a doubt, Jake remains the first actor, the undisputed main character. On first listen, it’s impossible not to think that this is a Led Zeppelin cover band, a certainty for most music critics who spontaneously associate them with the Italian Måneskin, and one could even sum up the impression of this third album with a nimble “heard one thing, heard everything“. To be even more obvious, there would be nothing wrong with thinking “Better listen to Led Zeppelin“. On the third album, custom would like to reach creative nirvana, but this is not the case. The Michigan band don’t back down one inch, they compulsively let their brain, heart and flesh into the seventies counterculture and seem almost afraid to ruin the music of those blessed 70s. First of all, the stylistic features of “Led Zeppelin I”, the timbre of Robert Plant, the structure of Jimmy Page, the heaviness of Bonham and John Paul Jones, enhanced by blurred progressive versions a la Rush – rare compared to the previous one – emphasized hard blues tones, space rock a- for Hawkwind, from melodic British spells captured by The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith’s inevitable déjà vu, fairy-tale folk and psychedelic digressions. The soul of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” is exaggerated at the beginning of “Fate Of The Faithful”: Josh obsessed with Robert Plant in the verses, more intense in the chorus, his personality disguised as Flower Power emerges, lyrical thrills”We fought for a fable, but instead we burn“miracle of amazement, Jack’s guitar solo, the silence of the rhythms, letting the others scream”Left empty run“. Let’s get rid of the inevitable rhetoric for a moment about attaching something already heard to every song, the memory is established: here we just need to listen, move on, go on a journey with these boys in love and let ourselves be touched by nostalgia. It’s hard to grasp the leap towards interpretive and compositional maturation given the stylistic consistency, but listening to Black Smoke Rising’s debut EP again, one can easily sense how much Josh’s timbre has grown, proof of experimentation, creativity. Jack, a shaman with his guitars. The acoustic intro of “Waited All Your Life” takes us to the Summer of Love, it feels like San Francisco 1967 is strewn with flowers, the race for freedom is a dynamic, sweet, poetic song.Have you waited all your life, come from afar and intend to stay?“. The meaning of the sung words lends itself to different interpretations, there is no desire to convince someone, if not to offer meditation. There are no authentic ballads, not even radio pulses, everything is permeated with warm melancholy and resembles the old dance “Falling Sky”, the blues permeates the harmonica solo; and ‘Sacred The Thread’ looks like ex voto, lulling folk, slow to verses, the melody of the chorus moves, it’s impossible not to sing, magic, and here is not the shadow of Led Zeppelin, but exceptional light. A playful interlude, the speed of “Runway Blues”, closes out the first section of the disc with a fade, welcoming the more progressive and aggressive feel of “The Indigo Streak” where you really catch the stars flying over the storm.”Seen at sunset, catching stars above the cyclone‘. It’s like ‘Frozen Light’, it breaks the heart with the melody, the solo, Sam and Danny’s groove, it’s powerful, it attacks head-on, supporting the main riff, the stigma of the whole album. We’re getting closer to the conclusion with The Archer, we hear country, blues, folk, we hear everything, this song shines, perfectly balanced sounds, melody, rhythm that rises and then calms down, we scream and pain pierced by love and lost it whispers with a voice and with a guitar: “Revenge is a bow, and arrows are only justice when fired. I loved, I lost, I am an archer“. The acoustic notes played by Jack in “Meet the Master” write a poem, the atmosphere drawn by Rush triumphs, the melody, the arrangement, the crescendo, the masterpiece is mystical, and Greta Van Fleet colors their journey: “What a day to travel faster, take my trip around the sun“. No final verdict or label can be given to Starcatcher, even after listening to it a few times, and it is impossible to question the talent of these young artists who must learn to be more daring, to hold on to these stars, to rip off the mask of a past that is too strongly constrains them, to the detriment of being called Led Zeppelin cosplays.
Recommended for: All nostalgics, those who love the 70s, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and anyone who has written music history.
Tracklists:
01. The fate of the faithful
02. Waited all my life
03. Falling sky
04. Sacred Thread
05. Runway Blues
06. Indigo stripe
07. Ice Light
08. Archer
09. Meeting with the Master
10. Goodbye for now
Arrangement:
Josh Kiska – vocals
Jake Kiska – guitar, keyboards
Sam Kiska – bass, keyboards
Danny Wagner – drums
For more information, visit the band’s official page here.