Star Grace doesn’t go so far as to position herself as a visitor from another world, but it’s not like it would be out of reach for her to be rockin’ on some kind of George Clinton or Sun Ra trip if she wanted to. What she offers, though more discreet and explicitly anchored in rock music, nevertheless points her audience towards a likeminded sense of communal elevation. For Star, the path forward runs, as unlikely as it sounds, through rave culture — only with an unexpected twist.
Raised in Oregon, as well as Austin, Texas, where the comet trail of hippie consciousness still glows bright, Star has always felt a strong connection to early-period Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters. In her eyes, The Dead started the world’s first rave scene. She makes a convincing case for this in her own music, filtering assertive rock grooves through the mind-expanding properties of both psychedelia and electronic music. As far as Grace sees it, Pink Floyd’s UFO Club heyday and the dancefloor mysticism of ’90s outfits like The Orb are two branches on the same tree.
Her work bubbles with a healing undercurrent, as she attempts to reconcile and re-conjoin aspects of our humanity that have been wrenched apart: songcraft and spontaneity, fashion and substance, femininity and strength, sensuality and joy, charisma and inclusion, etc.
— Saby Reyes-Kulkarni