Umbrella, the debut album by Starcleaner Reunion, is retro-futurist pop music made by four 20-somethings raised in the shadows of a big city. Accordingly, there’s a sweet scrappiness to their songs, patchwork quilts of baroque textures like chugging guitars, glitchy electronica, andmusique concrète sampling. Some thoughts and images that come to mind: a divider in a record bin that says “space age bubblegum krautrock???”; a 1968 Velvet Underground promo poster depicting the band as crayon doodles, later recreated by Galaxie 500; The ‘Life Is Good’ guy lounging in a warm pool of sunlight, favorite song playing on the radio, spliff in hand. Maybe he’s wearing a beret, there’s something Francophone happening here, too. Vocalist and tambourine player Jo Roman, guitarists Pat Drummond and Neil Torman, and bassist Adam Kenter grew up in the same small town of Springfield, New Jersey. After meeting in high school, they played together in various configurations, bonding over a collective love forBrazilian psych, C86 jangle, and ’90s noise. It was only in 2022, after Drummond moved to New York from Montreal, that the friends solidified into something beyond swapping song links over text. “We call it a supergroup,” jokes Torman. They chose the name Starcleaner Reunion after a 1970s children’s book about magical beings that return light to the sky. They recorded their first EP, 2023’s Club Estrella, quickly, with barely a thought for production. There’s an innocence to these early, kaleidoscopic bursts of alt-rock, but also an instinctual familiarity, “which goes back to how long we’ve all known each other and played together,” Torman says. “It’s always very natural.”
