Enveloping across both shoegaze-ready vigor and dream-pop lushness, Little Glimmer is a standout full-length from Portland-based band Starover Blue. Their fourth studio album feels both intimate and immense, with moments of hushed vulnerability often blooming into cathartic tonal expanses. Led by longtime collaborators Kendall Sallay and Dirk Milotz, the band crafts an immersive balance between impactful guitars and delicate vocal harmonies, drifting seamlessly between fragility and force.
Traversing from twinkling, dreamy intrigue into a gorgeous swell of shoegaze-y guitar distortion, the title track commences the album in riveting form. “How do you make an old love feel new?” an understated vocal presence follows, steadily escalating as the doses of guitars and glistening Juno-106 synths continue to intertwine. Artful lyricism stirs within, reflective of how new emotions can unfold with delicate subtlety: “It started so softly / Like snowfall on snow / Like moss covers stone.” Right away, the band shows a capacity for dynamic, textured rock productions with emotive, poetic lyrical prowess.
The ensuing “Larkspur” captivates as well, unleashing a whirring tonal disposition initially reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine. The dreamy vocal tone and serene acoustic strums in the verses then conjure a Mazzy Star likeness, ultimately finding a blissful aesthetical ground between thunderous shoegaze and introspective dream-pop. “Choke” then arrives with a more visceral weight, achieving a Beach House-esque stylistic glow as lyrics capture a painful recognition — specifically, misdirected anger toward a loved one and the deep regret that follows. “Sometimes I don’t feel like a person / Sometimes I wish that I were dead,” exudes that intensity, especially when confronted by the reassurance of enduring love: “…you love me just the same.”
While “Little Glimmer” poignantly explores the growing of emotions, “Gatorade” examines the realization of those smitten feelings coming to a close, as a long-term relationship meets its end. The devastating “baby, I’m losing the feeling” refrain plays as an impactful declaration, following baseball imagery regarding “opposing teams” and “now I’m crying on the bench, waiting for the game to end.” Twangy, forlorn guitar textures ruminate underneath, into bursts of vocal and tonal ardency. A hopeful, mature hope for the other to “find somebody better than me” concludes into a delicate, spine-tingling finality.
Album finale “Magdala” is another standout, this time strutting a nocturnal expanse from dream-pop to blaring alt-rock. It plays as a haunting elegy and emotional centerpiece, written about Sallay’s turbulent yet enduring friendship with the late Dominic Miranda (frontman of San Jose band The Record Winter). Against the twilight calm of the “blue hour,” the song blends grief, reverence, and disbelief — “I don’t believe in heaven” — into something transcendent, artfully balancing pain and retrospective devotion. Little Glimmer is a stirring achievement from Starover Blue, who achieve a dreamy pop and rock appeal that consistently feels atmospheric, expansive, and deeply human.
