Big Stir Records has announced the upcoming release of Stars, a career-encompassing yet completely new collection from acclaimed San Francisco Bay Area band The Morning Line (and they’re not horse racing pundits). A 21-track ‘bonanza’ featuring the singles 90s Pickup, This Lens, and Anhedonia, plus completely remixed versions of the band’s personal picks from a back catalogue spanning over 20 years. The album is to be released on CD and streaming worldwide on September 18th and is available for pre-order here.
The band is new to the Big Stir Records roster, and they are in many ways a quintessentially Northern California concern, but their story starts back east with frontman Stephen Smith’s Boston roots in fondly remembered indie outfits Salem 66, God’s Eye, and Green Magnet School, recording for labels like Sub Pop, Homestead, and Domino and sharing stages with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., and innumerable others. However, the band is a band born of the Bay Area: guitarist Brian Mello (no jokes about being laid back, please!) has played with just about everyone in San Francisco, most notably in his band The Bellyachers; drummer Peter Craft and bassist David Knupp have similarly been found in most of the venues and many of the bands in the SF Area. Peter is also an important local recording engineer and studio boss, and his studio, Boxer Lodge, where all these songs were recorded, is part of the lifeblood of the Bay Area’s pop, roots, and country music communities.
The band has been at it for over two decades and has produced a string of albums and EPs that have consistently garnered praise. This is an album of new & collected material to mark their arrival at the label, with two new songs, a demo dating all the way back to 2004, and a selection of the band’s best work from the years in between. The songs have all been remixed. Smith states, “It is a summing up of the band’s accomplishments to date and the beginning of a whole new chapter for the band on a brand new label.”
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