The first time I pressed play on Lael Neale’s third album, Star Eaters Delight, was late April, when life was hectic due to our impending move. I remembered her previous effort, the equally lo-fi Acquainted With Night, which was released in February 2021. As here, hiss from a four-track cassette recorder haunted stark songs built with an Omnichord rather than keyboards or guitar. Early ’21 were dark days, of course, when thousands upon thousands of people were dying every day from COVID-19. Like many others, I teetered between facing reality and distracting myself with the sweet nostalgia of yesteryear. I should have featured it, in other words, but didn’t.
I still find myself torn between the present and past, to an extent. One thing I miss about my olden times, aka the 1970s and ‘80s: the slower pace. Somewhere along the line, the music industry adopted the movie model of huge opening weekends and, for all but the elite artists, post-release abandonment. I’m not just talking about the music companies, either. Rare it is for most review sites, including mine, to spotlight relatively recent releases. (In my case, they’ve either just come out or are old favorites.) Even for an album like Star Eaters Delight, which has done fairly well, once the initial weekend is done, all the fans tend to move on. So think of this review as my homage to the music magazines of long ago, which often praised (and damned) months-old albums in their review sections.
Star Eaters Delight, written and recorded during the height of the pandemic, is accented by the echoes of other eras. “I Am the River,” the opening salvo, begins with a jaunty drum pattern that’s quickly matched by Neale’s non-lexical vocals. Then the lyrics, tied to the trope of rivers being a source of both death and rebirth, kick in, with her vocals conjuring the ghosts of long ago. The song marries lo-fi pop to old-school folk sediment. (Pun intended.) That same sense arises on the next track, “If I Had No Wings,” which sounds like a forgotten gem from a Fast Folk compilation. The propulsive “Faster Than the Medicine” digs into love’s trajectory, while her vocals echo both Liz Phair and Joan Baez. It’s quite remarkable.
“In Verona” weaves echoes of Patti Smith into the mix, as well. About faith and feeling out of place, it’s a dramatic and poetic ode that travels faster than time itself, as its eight minutes and change play out in what feels like the blink of an eye. The bittersweet “Must Be Tears” switches gears to an extent, conjuring the muse Nico—as in The Velvet Underground and…—though more from her Jackson Browne days than the Lou Reed ones. (All tomorrow’s parties, in turns out, can be found beneath a portrait of Queen Anne.)
The folk-styled “No Holds Barred” features an acoustic guitar riff that’s reminiscent of both CCR and the Velvet Underground, while digging into the day-to-day reality of pandemic life: “Tell me how to live and die/Tell me what, where, when, and why/‘Cause I can’t take another thought/Of what I’m meant to do or not.” It’s more than just that, however, stepping into the vagaries that come with navigating love in the time of a deadly coronavirus: “I won’t seek, if you won’t hide/I’ll count the clouds until you’re mine.”
“Return to Me Now” is another highlight that, like “If I Had No Wings,” comes across like a long-lost gem. It’s proverbial walk through a haunt of ancient peace. (No doubt, “gray twilight pour’d on dewy pastures, dewy trees, softer than sleep,” on her parents’ Virginia farm, where she wrote this and the album’s other songs). The penultimate track on the album, it leads into the moving “Lead Me Blind,” which explores the “shadow side of love.”
It’s well worth many spins—as is the outtake Neale recently released from the Star Eaters Delight sessions, “White T-Shirt.” Give them a listen.
The Old Grey Cat 
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