Shimmering Stars

Shimmering Stars, c’est un jeune groupe de Vancouver, qui joue de l’indie pop garage influencée par les 50's/60's. Mais en plus bizarre: ils sonnent comme des Beach Boys déjà morts, dont on entendrait les voix depuis le siphon du lavabo. Dans le premier clip du groupe, Rory McClure, le frontman des “étoiles étincelantes”, s’affiche comme le gentil et joli looser, un brin magnifique, courant et fonçant en vélo derrière ce qu’on imagine être son ex, partie avec un gars qui a une Toyota Tercel – la classe, en somme. “Walking down the street and I want to kill everyone I see”…

Shimmering Stars va sortir son premier EP chez Almost Musique le 15 novembre (déjà en précommande, même).

Une chouette interview ici, le lien bandcamp avec 4 morceaux en écoute (dont ‘I’m Gonna Try’ en téléchargement) là. - The Drone

Would you look at these lads? Don’t they look fetch? Well, since Monday was a bit of a slow one in the music biz, I was happy in the afternoon when I ran across this new track from Canadian group Shimmering Stars. The band made waves back in the summer with their song “Im Gonna Try,” and now they’ve got another blissful pop jam to toss your way (via P4K). Seems like something we’d all be into right? Indeed, so happy Tuesday.

- Austin Town Hall

Do you guys remember about 3 months ago, when I introduced you to Vancouver’s best hidden secret (for now) Shimmering Stars? If you’re not familiar, I would take this opportunity to get close — this four piece are really rad. I’ve been obsessed with ‘I’m Gonna Try’ for quite some time — It’s rooted in super laid back 50s grooves with some non-irritating harmonizing, totally bright but a little too melancholic to be called completely sunny. Almost Musique is releasing Shimmering Star’s new 7?: the A side being ‘East Van Girls’ and the B side is ‘I’m Gonna Try’. My guess? Pick up your copy ASAP as they’ll go quick and are completely worth your money. The band also have done an Everly Brothers cover which you can pick up below as well as the b-side to their new 7?. They’ve also got a music video. Check it: - Nu Wave Brain

read a piece of an article in New York magazine this week that claimed that hipsters were dead. Based on the crowds outside the bars in my neighborhood at night, I beg to differ. And this footage I’m presenting here supports that hipster culture is alive and well even as far away as British Columbia.

But hipster culture’s a mean sort of moniker. The boy(s) of Shimmering Stars are obviously your nice, sensitive hipster that will pedal after ex-girlfriends on borrowed bikes and stare forlornly at their big, sad blue eyes, which are also forlorn (but in a cold bitch, Zooey Deschanel from 500 Days of Summer kind of way). “Tight pants and stock flannel be damned!” Her eyes scream as her she putters away in her new beau’s ride. Aw. At least you tried, pal.

The music is independent of the style. Although there’s a level of gauze to it that would beg pointing at similar production, and its retro love ballad melody is becoming rather familiar, Shimmering Star does them both well enough, and clear enough to bother marking them for distinction and tagging them with such words before releasing them back to the wilds of Canada.

This is a B-side to a 7? that’s available from Almost Musique.

- Crawdaddy! Magazine

Naivety can be a wonderful thing. As music enters an age where it is consistently blurring the lines between art and content, there’s something refreshing about a band who sound so completely bereft of alterior motive and commercial influence. Shimmering Stars are a band who embody this wonderful kind of ignorance, a quartet seemingly frozen in a bygone era and thawed in the choppy waters of today. The kind of music you’d associate with an excellent post-war prom, their tender, dream pop ambience a sort of cool embrace.

Even as hype about them rises, the lack of information about them feels charming – far removed from well planned manoeuvres that WU LYF and others have spent their time orchestrating, but something had to give. With an EP on the way and the crowds of amorous bloggers swelling, band leader Rory typed out a few answers to a few questions about the Shimmer Stars and what they do, what they are in to and what it is like growing up in a town with a population of 7,000.
- The Pigeon Post

The cool-cover has had a bit of a resurgence in the last year or so. Rackety bands from London to LA, via Montreal and Minneapolis have been turning the classics into slowed down, hyped up or dragged out monsters. Thanks Jo Whiley! This lot, Canada's Shimmering Stars are old hands at it, having already covered Joy Division's 'Atmosphere'. This time, they've chosen something a little lighter in 'Let it Be Me'. A song that's been through the cover version wringer a lot more than once, The Sweet Inspirations, Betty Everett + Jerry Butler, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, The Everly Brothers and more have had a go, is turned into an understated echo filled dreamtrack.

- Neu Magazine

I'm sure that by now you've already read a line or two about the, well, shimmering retro pop of British Columbia's Shimmering Stars, but a short while ago I was hit up with the announcement of the band's 7 inch release of East Van Girls / I'm Gonna Try on Almost Musique, and along with it came this simply otherworldly beautiful cover of the Everly Brothers' Let It Be Me, a song that perfectly fits the Shimmering Stars' take on fifties to sixties-inspired, melancholy-drenched indie pop. Order the limited, four track debuting 7 inch here and make sure you don't miss the new, heartbreaking video for I'm Gonna Try below. - No Fear of Pop

Influenced by the sounds of Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, with a touch of Phil spector, Shimmering Stars creates timeless, lo-fi dream pop. Guitars strum and jingle, the vocals soar and ascend, while the drums beat-beat like the sound of your heart. They take you back to first crushes, lost loves, and restless nights contemplating just how you’re going to work up the nerve to talk to *that* person. These songs glisten and glimmer, sweetly encompassing the sound of falling in love.

Shimmering Stars will be releasing a 7” on France’s Almost Musique label in October.

- Unholy Rhythms

Shimmering Stars, de Colombie-Britannique (CA), n'a rien d'une étoile filante mais confirme bien sa brillance. Dans la constellation d'artistes, Rory McClure sait parsemer de mille éclats sa pop intemporelle et lumineuse. Cette étoile là, n'est pas point de s'éteindre et de rester nébuleuse puisqu'Almost Musique et Trivial Pursuit prennent également le relais pour nous faire parvenir sa lumière. (via Delicious Scopitone)
- Altered Zones

Mon ami, mon frère,

si tu as besoin d’une chanson qui sonne comme la disparition d’une angoisse,
comme le moment où la tristesse accepte de se retirer, de laisser le champ libre à autre chose,
si tu veux une ballade pour ces moments où les choses se remettent à fonctionner comme elles devraient,
si parfois tu te dis que pour une fois l’univers se comporte comme il devrait, et que tu voudrais savoir comment on chante ce sentiment là
si aux grandes épopées tu préfères les petites histoires bien tournées, surtout si elles concernent des époques et des gens que tu n’as pas connus
si parfois tu te rends compte que tu sais faire des choses que tu avais oubliées (nager, courir, séduire, rire, retrouver la trace d’une vieille joie, abandonner)
...

Alors écoute cette chanson. Elle frémit, elle sait qu’elle va devoir bondir, elle ne procède que par petits sauts. Elle est nuageuse et lumineuse. Elle hésite mais elle est impétueuse, aussi. Elle est rétro et aventureuse. Elle a quelque chose de très petit et de vertigineux en même temps.
Shimmering Stars - Sun’s Going Down

Et elle est déjà finie. - Blogothèque

As light as air’ is what we would say about Shimmering Stars‘ compositions. Light and bewitching, Rory McClure sounds like the best in pop music. I then advise you quickly to purchase her It’s Just As Well tape on Trivial Pursuit before it floats away.
- Delicious Scopitone

We could have thought it was the return of a forgotten band from the 60’s… The one you find in your parents’ attic, an old vinyl. But not at all, anyway it’s not a band, it’s one man’s performances: Rory McClure. And what a performance ! A « romance » pop with several voices… This old pop hasn’t dated in the slightest, it even has now much scope and shape with this recent project. Shimmering Stars is gleaming and its writings shine with youth ! Long live to this sparkling star… - Delicious Scopitone

Check out this pure, elegiac heart-cleaver by British Columbia’s Shimmering Stars. In its effortless conjuring of the sad spirit of blue-eyed golden-age sob’n‘roll, “Sabians” may be akin to a lot of the hermited romance currently streaming down the burning cheeks of a lot of all our favourite bedroom-balladeering pop downers but somehow it seems to dwell in more space than that – its mournful echo, sparse majesty and arching heavenwards harmonies suggesting the high-ceilinged grandeur and lustrous stained-glass colours of somewhere more ecclesiastical altogether.

Shimmering Stars – Sabians

- Transparent

Another dusty guitar pop number from Canadian indie-pop outfit Shimmering Stars; this particular slow-dancer is taken from SS' recent cassette release, It's Just As Well, which is available now on Trivial Pursuit. (via Delicious Scopitone)

MP3: Shimmering Stars: "East Van Girls"

Check out "Sun Goin' Down" and "I'm Gonna Try" too:

MP3: Shimmering Stars: "Sun Goin' Down"

MP3: Shimmering Stars: "I'm Gonna Try"
- Pitchfork

Way, way back in May, we posted the breezy "I'm Gonna Try", from Canadian garage-pop outfit Shimmering Stars. The band's got a 7" coming out via French label Almost Musique, and "I'm Gonna Try" is one of the four songs that'll be featured. This new song, "Sun Goin' Down", won't be included on the release, but it's a wistfully wonderful trip nonetheless. (via Delicious Scopitone)

MP3: Shimmering Stars: "Sun Goin' Down"

Check out "I'm Gonna Try" again too:

MP3: Shimmering Stars: "I'm Gonna Try" - Pitchfork

British Columbia outfit Shimmering Stars list the Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, and "anxiety issues" as influences. You can definitely hear the former two in the moony-eyed garage-pop of "I'm Gonna Try", and the track's "In My Room" lonely-bedroom certainly seems fit for the socially averse. (via Delicious Scopitone)
MP3: Shimmering Stars: "I'm Gonna Try" - Pitchfork