Biography
Brooklyn collective Stars Like Fleas fuse post-rock experimentation, chamber-music textures, traditional American folk elements, and indie pop into an expansive, deliberately loose sound that echoes both present-day acts such as Broken Social Scene, Akron/Family, and Sigur Rós and earlier innovators including Rachel’s, Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt’s solo work, and the Incredible String Band. At the center stand singer-lyricist Montgomery Knott and multi-instrumentalist-producer Shannon Fields, yet the lineup routinely swells past thirty musicians for concerts and studio sessions; the credits for the band’s third album list ten core members. Knott, a video artist who runs the Williamsburg gallery and restaurant Monkey Town, had earlier collaborated with the Austin ambient-drone duo Stars of the Lid, while Fields arrived with experience spanning acoustic Americana and electronic noise; the pair first connected in Brooklyn in 1998.
What began as a studio-only endeavor—songs assembled incrementally through digital multitracking in separate apartments—yielded the self-released 1999 demo Took the Ass for a Drive. Long scarce, that recording resurfaced as a digital download in 2006. Four years after the demo, Sun Lights Down on the Fence welcomed greater outside participation, prompting Knott and Fields to convert the project into a touring ensemble with a rotating roster. The 2007 album The Ken Burns Effect—its title a playful nod by Knott to the documentarian’s signature technique of slowly panning and zooming across still photographs—intensified the collective approach: fiddle-and-banjo specialist Sam Amidon, who also contributes shape-note singing rooted in nineteenth-century American hymnody, and drummer Ryan Sawyer appear on every one of its ten tracks alongside an expanding pool of occasional contributors.
What began as a studio-only endeavor—songs assembled incrementally through digital multitracking in separate apartments—yielded the self-released 1999 demo Took the Ass for a Drive. Long scarce, that recording resurfaced as a digital download in 2006. Four years after the demo, Sun Lights Down on the Fence welcomed greater outside participation, prompting Knott and Fields to convert the project into a touring ensemble with a rotating roster. The 2007 album The Ken Burns Effect—its title a playful nod by Knott to the documentarian’s signature technique of slowly panning and zooming across still photographs—intensified the collective approach: fiddle-and-banjo specialist Sam Amidon, who also contributes shape-note singing rooted in nineteenth-century American hymnody, and drummer Ryan Sawyer appear on every one of its ten tracks alongside an expanding pool of occasional contributors.
Albums
