Speak Slowly: awesome music you may have missed

The lyrics of Stephen Ryan are among the finest I’ve encountered in popular music. Then there’s that haunting restraint in his voice. Not many play the gentle card as convincingly as Ryan did with The Stars of Heaven. Add to that the bittersweet mix of tender harmonies and melodies that were the band’s trademark, and it’s easy see why so many fell for – and continue to fall for – their charms.

Their tenure was brief – five years from 1983 to 1988. The Stars had a whole different take on making music. It wasn’t an easy fit back then and it still isn’t instantly classifiable today.

It could loosely be called country, with some folk threads here and there, but their contemporary vigour is what set them apart. They were in search of their own sound and, with Speak Slowly, they found it.

They had a prodigious start with the comet-like single Clothes of Pride. The subsequent Peel sessions were shot through with magisterial moments, and they set the bar even higher with their debut proper.

When poetic champions compose, it all feels very natural. Speak Slowly is one for the dreamers. I'd listen to this wonderful record and stare up into that giant 1980s screensaver called the sky. There were always answers written there while this was playing. Never in all celestial time was a band so appropriately named.

The word back then was that Speak Slowly was underwhelming, but time has shown it to be a delicately crafted classic. Perhaps the fact that it was out of time worked against the band. It still sounds timeless, a measure of its originality. Bafflingly, it was their swan song. Witnessing the heyday of The Stars of Heaven was my introduction to the kind of magical thinking great music engenders.