WMUH Presents
Golden Apples, Starcleaner Reunion and Catatonic Suns
Friday, November 14, 2025
The Event Space at Seegers Union, Muhlenberg College
Doors 7:30 PM
Music 8:00 PM
Free with Berg ID
General Admission $12 in advance, $15 Day of Show
Golden Apples is a prolific group of musicians formed and heralded by singer and songwriter Russell Edling. Shooting Star, their fourth album, is a sprawling new work packed to the brim with playful eccentricities and dynamism, one that owes as much of its inspiration to mid-century folkies like Michael Hurley and Karen Dalton as it does to alt rock of the nineties like Yo La Tengo and Stereolab. The album is a constellation of influences, experiences, and reckonings–with the state of the world, with others, with creativity, and with oneself.
Shooting Star follows Bananasugarfire, Golden Apples “relentlessly inspiring” (Paste) 2023 release. This time around, Edling sought to deconstruct his creative process by centering collaboration instead of a more solitary pursuit in songwriting, even as personal matters made isolation a more natural instinct. He describes taking time to make notes of the ways, timing and forms in which songs came to him in the process of demoing the record, and regularly questioning if his approach was like that of “watching a pot of water boil” or waiting for a bolt of light to appear in the sky. No two songs were created in the same way. Instead of holing up in a recording studio, the creation of the record was formed by a patchwork of collaborations in a variety of recording locales, all which were later alchemized by mix engineer Matthew Schimelfenig.
Anxiety and isolation go hand in hand with connection and elation on Shooting Star, each sentiment harmonized by dreamy mellotron and static haze or raucous spurs of scrubby guitars and doubled vocals. Across the record’s twelve songs, Edling wrestles with the human experience with an almost holistic touch, with lyrics that feel both deeply considered and sometimes wonderfully offhand. Muscular, shimmery “Noonday Demon” is a track that gets its title from a book subtitled the “atlas of depression” that Edling says lives on his bedside table. He elaborates: “‘Noonday Demon’ addresses the way anxiety and paranoia can make you sort of lose track of yourself and your identity – turning your world upside down and alienating you from the people around you at the same time.” It’s accompanied by a video directed by Andrew Shearer.
Across the fuller swath of Shooting Star, Edling’s lyricism volleys between gestural and impressionistic and cutting and confronting, softening with a tender romanticism on tracks that reference his life with partner and bandmate Mimi Gallagher. Even in the throes of the more difficult experiences that life has to offer, we still fall in love, plan weddings, make art, and Edling paints his romanticism with an acute awareness of the pitfalls of our shared humanity. In many ways, Shooting Star is an appeal to the muse, a record of “songs about writing songs” born from Edling’s desire to trust his instincts despite the posturings of inner demons and creative roadblocks, and to celebrate the little wins along the way.
New York City-based Starcleaner Reunion is a new band of old friends. Singer Jo Roman, guitarists Pat Drummond & Neil Torman, and bassist Adam Kenter have been making music together in various configurations since they were high school students together in New Jersey, but never all together in the same group. After Drummond moved back to New York from Montreal and connecting with drummer Sam Unger through a mutual friend, the band solidified and began rehearsing in 2022.
Their new EP, Café Life, is the result of a newfound home-recording and production process, an inspired project in which the band felt they could explore and experiment for the first time. Listen closely and you’ll hear samples of rain and thunderstorms, rumbling 808 sub-bass, digital synthesizers ripped from a decade old copy of GarageBand, and ghostly spoken poetry buried deep in the mix of the 4 tracks. Café Life is indebted and dedicated to not hurrying and taking your time.
From the moment the group was formed, Starcleaner Reunion has been guided by their belief that music can be transportive and furnish a unique world. Jo Roman’s lyrics paint a captivating picture – one that prompts audiences to reckon with the impressions and colors that her imagery conjures up. Café Life is their first release that welcomes people into a world of their own.
Adjacent to new psych-rock Philadelphia, the Allentown born three-piece Catatonic Suns uniquely merge the tones of the late 1980s Pacific Northwest underground and the huge shimmery wall of sound elements heard in the British scene from the same era.
Their latest EP, Shallow Water Blackout is out now.
