Stars of the Lid
The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (Kranky) Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride are now thousands of miles removed from their Austin beginnings. Wiltzie is in Belgium, McBride in Chicago, yet together as Stars of the Lid, they’ve released their finest work yet, a 2-CD tour de force that resonates with the distance and loneliness of winter. “When I was a kid, my dad was a huge fan of classical music,” muses McBride. “I would hang out in my room with the door shut, and the sound of the music would seep in, and it would add this kind of new fidelity to it. It was kind of removed, it was distant.” On The Tired Sounds of … McBride and Wiltzie have mastered this new fidelity, fully transitioning from drone junkies to ECM-style maestros, due to a new emphasis on melody. Early albums like Gravitational Pull Vs. the Desire for an Aquatic Life were studies in sound, full of sustained drones with little overt deviation. Now, McBride and Wiltzie have added strings, piano, and horns to their baseline of manipulated guitar and field recordings. Pieces like the two-part “Requiem for Dying Mothers” are based entirely on obvious chord progressions and variations of same. There are still long stretches (primarily on the second disc) where SOTL fixate on a given note, shading it with layered nuance, and this is where they’re at their best, at the point where atmosphere and melody mingle. The SOTL sound has found a grand plateau of elegance and purity, and the Tired Sounds of … is a tribute to the light-year musical progression of McBride and Wiltzie. 
This article appears in November 30 • 2001.