"No New Kinda Story" by Starflyer 59, March 15, 2022
Starflyer 59 produces a lot of music. With sixteen studio albums as of last year and a ton of EPs, the band's prolific yearly album cycle has gained the band many die-hard fans. A staple of Tooth & Nail Records in the early '90s, the band started as a shoegazer band but started to diversify their sound in the late '90s. The musical shift in Starflyer sparked new interest in the band, particularly on 1998's The Fashion Focus and 1999's Everybody Makes Mistakes. The latter mixing a variety of styles and becoming one of the most beloved indie Christian records. Opening with droning "Play the C Chord" and ending on 12-minute piano/saxophone tune "The Party," Everybody Makes Mistakes certainly is no blip in the band's discography.
YOU KNOW WE HAD A HELL OF A DAD. Blue Collar Love, A Starflyer 59 fan podcast, said that the style of this album was "New Wave, Beach, [and] Country." Everybody Makes Mistakes was one of the last records produced by Gene Eugene before he died of a brain aneurysm while sleeping in his studio in 2000. Eugene had been a child actor in '70s who became a musician and worked in the early Christian scene in '80s and '90s. As well as being a member of Starflyer, he had been part of the Christian Rock supergroup Lost Dogs. For Starflyer 59, Mistakes marks the end of the band's legendary line-up and subsequent records featured mostly involvement by the band's founder and frontman, Jason Martin. Throughout the band's career, Martin has remained adamant that Starflyer 59 is a Christian band, despite most lyrics only cryptically alluding to Christianity. "No New Kinda Story" may be the band's most iconic song. In 2013 when director Jesse Bryan told the story about the early years of Tooth & Nail Records, No New Kinda Story was chosen as the title of the documentary.
THIS IS WHAT WE WANT; YOU KNOW WE HAD TO WAIT A GOOD WHILE. The song "No New Kinda Story" is made even more cryptic by its bizarre music video. The song opens with a serene synth/string line and the song is then driven by a marching guitar riff. The synth line keeps the song peaceful until the middle chorus adds spooky Orchestra Hits which makes the rest of the song unnerving even though it never intensifies again. The imagery in the music video seems to pay an homage to the 1957 Swedish film, The Seventh Seal, as the old man in the music video and in the film must play a chess game with Death. While Martin hasn't explicated the lyrics of this song, it seems to be alluding to Ecclesiastes 1:9, which reminds us that "there is nothing new under the sun." Martin says, "We had a hell of a dad," which is a rare use of mild profanity in a Tooth & Nail release, but could be talking about his own father who helped to support his sons' musical career while working as a truck driver. The song "No New Kinda Story" today makes me think about how unoriginal everything seems, especially the school year I'm in the middle of. It also makes me think about how some of the most original books that I read, movies that I watched, and songs that I listened to back before entering the workforce seemed so original, but as I got older I realized that those things were just derivatives. And finally, I think about Julius Cesar being stabbed by who was supposed to be his best friend on this day some 2000 years ago. Beware the Ides of March today. Nothing is new. Nothing is original. And yet we keep trudging around from cradle until that final chess game.
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