Starcleaner Reunion’s Umbrella captures a very intergalactic whimsy

Cooper Edens’ 1979 book The Starcleaner Reunion is an illustrated children’s adventure about a dandyish, top-hatted cohort – the starcleaners – who attempt to restore the darkened night sky with nothing but soapy water and self-belief. It’s the kind of obscure IYKYK story that sticks with you deep into adulthood, all hand-drawn starscapes and galactic whimsy, and so it makes complete sense that the book’s Goodreads page alludes to a “ballet in the works.” When you name your band, you don’t necessarily want people to dissect it at every opportunity. Sometimes you just pick a few words and crack on. But Starcleaner Reunion just so happened to pick the perfect name to evoke their music. The grooves on debut album Umbrella are full of spacey retro-pop – the kind that looks outward to the stars and sees a smiling moon made of cheese. The quartet formed post-pandemic, but their genesis was long before. They each grew up in the small town of Springfield, New Jersey, and, as the only four people of just over 10,000 to be on the weirdo-music mainline, grew close at early ages. With Stereolab, bossa nova, and jangle-pop in their ears, and big city dreams in their heads, they independently mi...