Album Review(s): The Tired Sounds of The Stars of The Lid & Stars of The Lid and The Refinement of Their Decline

Well, I guess I am a part of the problem now.

For a long time, I’ve railed against the idea of the iTunes market. For single songs, when you are like “Oh hey remember this song?” it works well, I guess—but it takes away from the experience of an album: there’s no liner notes to read, no experience of getting up to flip the record over when the side has concluded. The music just becomes compressed files on your hard drive.

But as I’ve gotten older, and accumulated more things, and switched jobs to one where I make slightly less and should maybe not be pissing what I do have on ephemera like 180 gram limited edition white vinyl reissues.

So when Kranky records announced it was reissuing two of the Stars of The Lid albums as triple LPs, I was like, “well shit, sign me up for that.” But then I saw how much they were going for—roughly $40 a piece. And I get it. I mean, it’s three records. And records are expensive. And as I stared at the shopping cart on Kranky’s website, seeing like $80+ as my total, I really wondered if I needed to purchase these reissues; specifically, if I needed them at all, was it something I needed to do right now?

Also, as I reassessed the situation, I looked around at all the records I do own, and I wondered if I really needed to own more. And in that moment, I decided I didn’t. If I didn’t drop all this mad cash on these Starts of The Lid reissues right now (or possibly ever) my life would go on just fine.

But, in an effort to write content that is relevant and timely for this blog, I have become a part of the problem.

So what I did, which was a total cop out, was I downloaded both of these albums in question—The Tired Sounds of The Stars of The Lid and And The Refinement of Their Decline—and proceeded to listen to them in all their 256k m4a glory, so that I could at least talk about these albums, somewhat knowledgably, for a current review.

Tired Sounds and Refinement are the final two SOTL alblums, released in 2001 and 2007, respectively, and for me, as someone who is not super well versed in all of their canon—only the reissue of The Ballstead Orchestra from early 2013—these records represent their shift toward more “modern classical” music.  Both of these are exponentially more accessible and less ominous than Ballstead was.

I mean, that’s not to say that there aren’t menacing or ominous or disconcerting moments—take the low, string-based drone of “Austin Texas Mental Hospital, pt 2”; they would be lull inducing if they weren’t so unnerving, swirling around and around you.  And really of the two of them, The Tired Sounds is definitely the more haunting an ominous; Refinement of Their Decline, rather, excels at being incredibly chilling and somber.

While I bet these both sound amazing on their painstakingly pressed 180-gram vinyl counterparts, with these albums, the conclusion that I’ve arrived at is that they are both true headphone records. Even when they become overpowering, there is a delicate, fragile quality to the glacial drifts of droning and string arrangement. It’s that chilling somber quality you find in “Piano Aquieu” or the minor triumphant strains of “The Evil That Never Existed” or the masterfully titled “That Finger On Your Temple is The Barrel of My Raygun.”

In the end, with both albums, they are both so evocative and gorgeous; they become the kind of thing that needs to be experienced. While some may thing that ambient droning music is just the kind of thing you leave on in the background, both The Tired Sounds of and The Refinement of Their Decline are actually both rather demanding, and interactive listens—ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning, as you make your way through over four hours of music that span across both records.

Maybe some day I will cop both of these vinyl reissues. Maybe my in-laws will buy them for me for Christmas—that’s coming up soon. Crazy, isn’t it? Or maybe my life will continue on just fine without six more heavy black discs taking up space in our living room. I was always aware of Stars of The Lid and aware of both of these records, but if anything, the knowledge of the reissues really introduced me to them, and to the experience that goes with immersing yourself in listening.

Both reissues were slated to be out on August 14, but have been delayed due to peak vinyl. They are now expected to ship the week of August 16, via Kranky.