Meet A Box of Stars

Hello friends of the family. You may remember this band popping up in our review of their album Days Drunk Off Heat. If not you should totally check out the review here. A box of Stars At any rate they are hear today to give us the what for!

Would you rather eat everything you see or lick everything you see? Why?

Macaulay and Jens: Lick. It’s like dipping your toes in the water rather than jumping in. Plus, none of us have teeth.

How long have you been making music together?

Macaulay and Jens: The 5 of us all met at college in Southern Vermont and have played together in various projects over the last 5 years. We each hail from a variety of musical backgrounds, allowing us to explore an array of genres together. We’d participated in everything from classical and contemporary jazz to indie rock to doom metal projects before beginning to hone the sound we have now. A Box of Stars as a concept and group has existed since the winter of 2017.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Macaulay: Our music pulls from the delicate intersection of dreams and waking life. Our songs deal less with traditional narrative and are more so rooted in imagery and emotive reality. When writing I rely heavily on the subconscious and attempt to trust my instincts. Through this process the songs reveal themselves slowly. I’ve kept a dream journal for the better half of a decade now and often lean on it when looking for a place to begin.

Additionally I have a knack for mishearing quotes and lyrics. More than once I’ve listened to a song or recording of a story and written down what I believed to be a quote only to look up the actual transcription and discover that I was off by a mile. Sometimes I’ll use what I thought I heard the first time.

What was the intention with this latest album Days Drunk Off Heat?

Macaulay: These songs were written and composed in a fairly disparate fashion. However upon sequencing them within a collection, they began to take on new meaning. Our drummer Tim Halteman is a writer of poems and short fiction. A while back he shared with me a short story he had written called Dolls that dealt with the transition out of childhood. In that story there was an incredibly brief but powerful passage about a father explaining migration to his child. Reading this I became overwhelmed by the notion that migration is perhaps the defining experience of life. Not only in the sense of physical movement from place to place but internally as well. Movement is what unites not only the human experience but that of plants, animals, the cosmos, etc.

Thematically, our debut EP explores this idea. It is an acknowledgment of the constant motion and evolution that applies to all beings.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be (doesn’t need to be music related)?

Macaulay and Jens: Whatever Tom Waits has.

Any final comments?

Jens: We currently live in a world unbounded by space and time. The ever-progressing discourse of technological innovation and human development has yielded a continuously swirling mix of information, cultures, and ideologies among people near and far. This of course can lead to miraculous creations and breakthroughs. Yet often times, we can become lost in thoughts and notions that far exceed our current beautiful reality, or find friction and confusion between differing perspectives and stories.

Music fundamentally allows the non-literary expression and relation of real-time emotion, transporting performers and listeners alike to a place our species has sought since the beginning of our existence. When we come together, set aside the minute and fragmented pieces of our daily lives, and revel in the space between notes, it becomes a universal language that strikes each of us to our core, often times regardless of personal differences or types.

It is our goal as musicians to allow ourselves and those around us to experience and make sense of these emotions, bringing people together over our mutual fears, sorrows, wonders, and innate existential gratitude.