Culture 4 min read By Lauren Baxter
Starsailor announce 25th anniversary reissue of debut album ‘Love Is Here’
Starsailor will release a remastered 25th anniversary edition of ‘Love Is Here’ on October 2, featuring BBC live recordings, unreleased demos, and bonus tracks, alongside a UK and European tour.
Starsailor have announced a 25th anniversary reissue of their debut album ‘Love Is Here’, set to arrive via Parlophone on October 2. The record, originally recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales with producer Steve Osborne and released in October 2001, has been fully remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. The album sold over one million copies worldwide and has accumulated more than 56 million streams on Spotify.
The vinyl edition will present the original album in a gatefold sleeve and will be available on coloured vinyl for the first time. A two-CD version adds alternative live and session recordings from the BBC, bonus tracks, live imagery, and recollections from frontman James Walsh. Among the extras are previously unreleased David Kosten mixes of ‘Fever’ and ‘Love Is Here’, original demos of ‘Good Souls’, ‘Poor Misguided Fool’, and ‘Coming Down’, and the band’s version of ‘All Or Nothing’ from the 2002 War Child/NME charity compilation ‘1Love’.
The second disc, titled ‘Love Is Here Live At The BBC’, includes previously unreleased performances from Glastonbury, T In The Park, Top Of The Pops, Later… With Jools Holland, Steve Lamacq’s Lamacq Live, and Jo Whiley’s Live Lounge. The tracklist spans the band’s early career, with recordings from 2001 and 2002 capturing songs such as ‘Tie Up My Hands’, ‘Alcoholic’, ‘Lullaby’, and ‘Good Souls’ in live settings.
The reissue coincides with a UK and European tour celebrating the album’s anniversary. The band will perform ‘Love Is Here’ in full alongside a string ensemble arranged and conducted by Joe Duddell, who has previously worked with New Order, Elbow, James, and Richard Hawley. The run begins at the London Palladium on the same day as the reissue’s release, before heading to Bexhill and several European cities including Utrecht, Bruges, Turnhout, Hasselt, and Bern. The band will then return to the UK for dates in Edinburgh, Manchester, Poole, and Birmingham later in the month.
This is not the first time the album has received an anniversary treatment. Starsailor marked its 20th anniversary in 2021 with a deluxe edition featuring covers, rarities, and newly recorded versions of five songs from the record. Speaking to NME at the time, Walsh reflected on the album’s place in the early ’00s British music scene and rejected the idea that bands such as Starsailor were merely filling a gap before the emergence of The Strokes and The White Stripes.
“I love The Strokes, but there’s a perception music fans needed this injection of life,” he said. “But I remember our gigs and it was exciting to be part of the New Acoustic Movement with Turin Brakes and Coldplay.” In NME’s review of ‘Love Is Here’, the record was praised as “a debut album of real emotional depth”, with particular acclaim for Walsh’s vocals and songwriting.
Starsailor have released five more studio albums since their debut, most recently 2024’s ‘Where The Wild Things Grow’. The band have confirmed they intend to begin work on their seventh studio album following the ‘Love Is Here’ anniversary shows.
