Starcleaner Reunion make peace with old memories in “Lay on Plastic Moment”

Singer Jo Roman aims to compartmentalise old memories after returning to a place that now feels unrecognizable. “For me, this song is derived from my personal experience of moving back to New York in 2023,” she explains. “It's a very ethereal song exploring the stresses of coming back to something you thought was a familiar home, but now is just something completely different.” Wobbly synths and heavy distortion mimic the distance and discomfort between how she thought her environment would feel and how it actually is.

Ahead of this album cycle – Umbrella is out September 25 via Take Care Records – the band wanted to record each song without thinking about how they’d play it live. “Lay on Plastic Moment”, however, followed the opposite trajectory. According to guitarist Pat Drummond: “This song’s a funny one because a lot of the songs on the record are things that we were playing live and tailored in the studio. Whereas this one came out of an old demo, and every few months we would be in the practice room and try it again. It was never really clicking for us until we brought it into the studio. Then we made it work while recording it. Now we're trying to figure out how to play it live.”

While this is only Starcleaner Reunion first song as a full band of writers, they’ve already been running the industry gamut well before their LP debut. Their second EP, Café Life, propelled them to indie rock stardom. They lingered in this prestige, spending considerable time last year on the road with Friko and TOPS, and five weeks supporting This Is Lorelei across the US and Canada. “Nate [Amos] and everybody in that band are tour masters,” guitarist Neil Torman gushes. “This was by far the first time we’d been out that long, and these guys have been doing it for 10 years. We looked up to them as mentors. Watching him play and experiment was so inspiring.”

It was on this tour that the band acquired various synths and amps via Facebook Marketplace, turning Umbrella into a diary, so to speak. Driving between dates, they spent time in the van scouring the local market for unique pieces that would be far too expensive in New York. Many of which ultimately became integral to the way they chose to announce themselves to the world.

“The Korg micro preset that I co-own with Adam [Kenter] is my favourite thing that I own,” says Roman. “I was so in love with how it sounded. It just sounds so wonky, donky, and cute. Adam and I found a UK one and modded it with a US port. I use it all the time.” For Torman, it’s become the band’s “signature keyboard” that “worked so well for this particular song. It has such a specific sound that even basic things sound unique. It just has its own character.”

Constructing each track without limitations, then chopping, warping, and reversing them, guided the band toward atmospheric pop and recombinant instrumentation – including clarinet, horns, and violin. “Lay on Plastic Moment”, the album’s closer, crystallises the patchwork of fragmented observations and stockpiled souvenirs from across the country that make Starcleaner Reunion one of the most exciting bands from NYC’s bubbling indie circuit.