Starsailor may have shifted a cool million copies of their debut album Love Is Here, but that didn't stop the retiring Wigan lads gaining a reputation as resident wimps of the British indie scene. It represented something of a coup, then, when they persuaded the legendary wall-of-sound producer Phil Spector to come out of retirement to produce that tricky second album. In the event, the oddly-matched team only came up with two tracks before Spector faded away again, but this fleeting brush with genius seems to have done frontman James Walsh's creative ambition no end of good. Silence Is Easy is an epic record in every sense of the word, its soulful balladry reaching levels of grandeur and urgency that, say, the likes of Travis can only dream of. True, the album lacks variety, and at times the prog-rock histrionics have a hollow ring to them. At its best, however, this is the sound of a band at the height of their powers and should, at the very least, lay those bed-wetting allegations to rest for good.
