Get to know Star Card
Photo Credit: Sabrina Yanez
If you really want to know about Star Card, take the time to really listen through “Flowers.” It's an exploratory song that combines spoken word with slow unfolding music, through its arpeggiated chords and a quiet gentle bassline. It also serves as the opening track for the band’s latest album Trash World.
Star Card is led by songwriter/vocalist Calley Nelson, guitarist Jake Whitener (Sunshine Convention, Kira Skye), bassist Jackson Tarricone (Voicemail) and drummer Brendan Landis (Receive, Hey Exit, Glifter). Trash World is the act’s follow up to the more left field 2023 EP Freak World.
On Trash World Star Card is intentional. Phrase repetitions become mantras (“Oblique Strategies”), guitar riffs swirl around in a circular pattern like a plane trying to land (“Even the Sun Can Hurt You”) and playful melodies turn into earworms (“Ambitious Guy”). Sometimes the lyrics are dark. Sometimes inquisitive. Mostly, they’re reflective. Nelson often reaches out for connection, knowing there’s a hand stretched out on the other side.
We talk to Calley about music lessons, reading reviews, the meaning of Trash World and more.
Tell us about Trash World.
Brendan had this idea to go through the better songs I'd made over the span of a few years and divide them into two piles with the plan of releasing them.
Those piles ended up being a more experimental one ("Freak World"), and those that were more trad and could be played with a live band ("Trash World"). Freak World—Trash World's weird little sister—was self-released, and then we got to work contending with the full band songs on Trash World, which took us a lot longer to record.
The "true meaning" of Trash World, though, is about recognizing your personal disasters as systemic and collaging them into a better life for yourself and others instead of throwing them away—or throwing yourself away, if you know what I mean. I was really contending with modern-day detritus, making sense of the more terrible and isolating experiences I've had and figuring out where the fuck to put them.
When you throw something away, that object usually takes a very long time to decay. I think it's an apt metaphor for what happens when we fuck, when we fight, when we feel betrayed, when people die, when we lose people we thought were going to be in our lives forever, all that uncomfortable shit we'd rather not look at—those experiences don't just go away. That's something many people contend with regularly, and that's what I (is it sick to say?) enjoy writing about, and why I feel driven to make music, because it's a way of communicating what's uncomfortable to talk about.
What’s your songwriting process like as a band?
For most of Trash World, I wrote guitar, then the melody, then the lyrics, and brought each song to the band to fill in with their parts. Sometimes I'll include extra parts, but I invite my bandmates to fuck with what I write and put their personal spin on it if they are playing it.
There was one song, however, where Jackson got the idea for a bass line in his car, then brought it to the band. That bass line ended up being the opening riff for “Lena.”
Are there specific songs that feel like emotional landmarks?
They're all emotional landmarks on my own personal emotional map, but some are land mines. “When You Want” is definitely the darkest song on the album, and maybe the most personal. I had (maybe still have) a stalker, and “Project the Pabst” was written from his perspective. I also added a confessional poem to the opening track, “Flowers.”
“Keep On Rocking In The Freak World” was written by our friend David [Drucker] in Painted Faces and is one of my favorite songs ever. His version makes me cry every time. I put it on when I want to feel comforted but want to cry a little. The arc of the song encapsulates everything I'm trying to do as a songwriter.
Do you read reviews, or avoid them?
I read them all. No one really writes negative reviews about tiny bands anymore. Reviews are helpful to read in figuring out what's coming across and what isn't, and also for convincing your friends to listen to your music and take what you are doing more seriously (lol). Music reviewers spend a lot of time listening to music, and I appreciate people who have dedicated themselves to listening, taking the 42 minutes and 48 seconds to listen to what I've made and telling me what they hear. I used to be a music writer when I was in my early twenties, but fell out of it—it's a lot of work, and it's mostly unpaid or competitive if it is, so thanks for what you do!
What’s something you’ve learned the hard way?
The Personal Answer: I'm mostly self-taught and wish I had taken music lessons when I was younger. We couldn't afford them when I was a kid, but I could have been more ambitious in sifting through YouTube and free online resources. I mostly read tabs, played by ear, made up my own chords, and strung notes together that I thought sounded good together, and got real comfortable feeling like an outsider artist, playing just for me.
I've gone through phases of lessons as an adult when I could afford them, and my boyfriend/bandmate Brendan has taught me some of what he learned in music school to play in his band, Receive, and he continues to give me ad hoc guitar lessons. I'm trying to be more disciplined in my guitar practice now and practice almost every day, but I still have moments where I want to throw my guitar out the window, pick it back up, and recommit to the outsider underground—but here I am, trying to earnestly become a better guitarist and be in a touring band.
The Trash World Answer: We first tried to record Trash World live in our practice space by hanging mics on all the instruments. The room is small, so there was too much bleed in everything to overdub anything, and we ended up wasting a lot of time. Now we just multi-track everything or live record with one mic.
If Star Card had a motto, what would it be?
Keep On Rocking In The Freak World !!!!!! ~:-)
Trash World is out now and can be purchased on Bandcamp. Follow Star Card on Instagram. Go see Star Card on tour.
Trash World, the most recent album by New York’s Star Card, is a new chapter in an open book. The songs are candid, direct. and read like pages out of a writer’s journal. Though the songs are more structured than on their debut EP, the band keeps their experimental spirit intact. Read our artist profile at the link!