I can’t help but wonder where those bands go. You know, those bands that we see in the movies? The ones that relish in garages and dark, tight-knit spaces, where guitar riffs swell above the masses and grace the ends of a microphone. Where hair clings to sweaty foreheads because listeners are pushed up against one another, like marinated olives in a jar. He loved olives… I digress. Please excuse me, the starpower is making me nostalgic.

Nostalgic for those bands that delight in the underground, that burst through the seams of past and present. A band much like Starcleaner Reunion. A five-piece bunch, Starcleaner Reunion is a sonic—practically cosmic—gang of music-makers who are no stranger to what they jokingly call “Euro-pop.” A majority of the band has been rocking together since high school, and it shows; plugging into them feels like floating up and above the busy world and straight through the stratosphere, to that place where goo-covered bands go to grace the planets and lick them clean.

Time feels a little different up in space, but over a year after the release of their debut EP Club Estrella, Starcleaner Reunion gives us Café Life. A slower pace, a refusal to rush into whatever comes next, Café Life is an amalgamation of lo-fi rock that was created in the band’s makeshift home studio in New York. So, the answer to my initial question? Where do those bands go, those bands, you know what I mean? We can find them in space amongst the stars, vacuuming the steam out of those gleaming orbs, those rocky asteroids of dust and ice, and harvesting particles of light for their sound. Or else, we can find them at the Bowery Ballroom on October 24, supporting Hello Mary and Bleary Eyed.

1. Congrats on Café Life. Been to any good cafes lately? Been to any good lifes lately?

I like Caffe Reggio, and this life is the best one.

2. I’m curious about the artwork on your album cover. Seems like the crew is covered in some sort of glowing, neon green material. When you’re writing a song, when do you know that you’ve made something radioactive?

You never know. All you can do is pursue something that catches your ear and feels good.

3. What’s the goo that makes your music so addicting? It’s okay, you can tell us.

Patrick, Adam and Neil were in a band called Goo in high school, so it’s literal to an extent. I think we are just naturally all on the same page from playing music together for a long time, which lends itself to a smooth creative process.

4. Let’s talk title. Where do you envision listeners taking your music? Cafés? Underground speakeasies? Parents’ garages? Or, maybe there’s something special about music that transcends a place.

Nowhere in particular, but all of those options sound great.

5. Your music tends to point out the mundane: Café Life’s “Birds on Power Lines,” “The Hand That I Put Down,” and 2023’s “Moss on my Brick Wall.” What’s the allure in captivating the ordinary?

That’s life. The ordinary is the most extraordinary, and the most apparently simple things are maybe the most complex and beautiful, like birds and moss.

6. In “The Hand That I Put Down,” you sing, “This is how I relearn, understand it/ I try to take my time.” What did you have to relearn in the time between your first EP, Club Estrella and Café Life? 

We relearned to trust ourselves and reapproach the more DIY nature we’re accustomed to.

7. Where’s the starpower in an intimate crowd?

I was really bad at guitar hero as a kid. I blamed it on playing “real guitar.”

8. There’s a poetic cadence to your lyrics. “Plein Air” muses, “Silken dreams do thread/ Wander in spiral/ Now appears a chimney swift that gives you/ Semblance…” Semblance feigns reality. Starcleaners, where do your silken dreams lead you next?

To this, Starcleaner Reunion had no answer. They leisurely beamed up into the sky, swirling a sticky note down after them from a portal in the clouds. It read, simply, “Bowery.”