UMBRELLA Debuts as STARCLEANER REUNION's Self-Produced Debut Album

Starcleaner Reunion has released its debut album, Umbrella, out now via Take Care Records. The self-produced album blends poetic abstraction, recombinant collage, and sonic craftsmanship, expanding on the band's retro-futurist pop sound, tied together by Jo Roman's vocals and visual prose, fragments of fleeting thoughts, memories, and observations, as evidenced by the album's singles, the playful 'Weather Instrument,' the woozy 'Never Odd or Even,' and the lush 'Lay On Plastic Moment,' and album standout 'Tea Drops Park,' released today.

Following the release of Cafe Life, their second EP that garnered them attention from outlets like Pitchfork, The FADER, Stereogum and Paste, the band performed live tirelessly, fine-tuning their material along the way, including tours with acts like This Is Lorelei, Friko and TOPS. In the summer of 2025, after completing their biggest tour to date, the bandmates hunkered down in drummer Adam Kenter's garage studio. Surrounded by tour souvenirs—stockpiles of gear purchased off Facebook marketplace—familiar songs unspooled in radically new directions.

'This is maybe the first time where we were writing without any self-imposed limitations regarding how we'd translate the songs live,' guitarist Neil Torman says, describing how tracks were chopped, warped, and reversed. On Umbrella the instrumentation is more varied, as the band invited friends to add embellishments, which led to sprinklings of clarinet, horns, and violin, the latter courtesy of mixer Ruben Radlauer's (Model-Actriz) father.

Starcleaner Reunion is on tour now.

Tour Dates

09/26 - Philadelphia, PA @ Minimart

11/07 - Queens, NY @ TV Eye

About Starcleaner Reunion

Vocalist and tambourine player Jo Roman, guitarists Pat Drummond and Neil Torman, and bassist Adam Kenter grew up in the same small town of Springfield, New Jersey. After meeting in high school, they played together in various configurations, bonding over a collective love for Brazilian psych, C86 jangle, and '90s noise. It was only in 2022, after Drummond moved to New York from Montreal, that the friends solidified into something beyond swapping song links over text. 'We call it a supergroup,' jokes Torman. They chose the name Starcleaner Reunion after a 1970s children's book about magical beings that return light to the sky.

They recorded their first EP, 2023's Club Estrella, quickly, with barely a thought for production. There's an innocence to these early, kaleidoscopic bursts of alt-rock, but also an instinctual familiarity, 'which goes back to how long we've all known each other and played together,' Torman says. 'It's always very natural.'

After that initial effort, Starcleaner Reunion 'learned a lot more about how to make the music sound like it does in our heads,' says Drummond. 'How to connect the dots between how we want it to feel and how to make it actually sound that way.' They approached their next EP, 2024's Café Life, with the intention of expanding the band's universe. Ironically, they discovered that in order to grow, they needed to backtrack to the place where it all began, the converted carport of Kenter's childhood home.

Starcleaner Reunion is Jo Roman, Pat Drummond, Neil Torman, and Adam Kenter.

Tracklist

1. Theme

2. Maschine Mockup

3. Never Odd or Even

4. Pasillo Piso

5. Eating the Alphabet

6. Tea Drops Park

7. Brittle On My Finger

8. Headlamp Hiker

9. Weather Instrument

10. Docking In Oslo

11. Lay On Plastic Moment

About Take Care Records

Take Care Records is an independent record label based in Brooklyn, built from a passion for music. Guided by the mantra, 'It's no good unless it's real,' the label focuses on fostering authentic artistic expressions that resonate on a personal level. Take Care maintains a close-knit connection with the city's indie music scene, championing singular artists with creative integrity.

Photo Credit: Blake Doyle | Download Hi-Res

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