Minneapolis/St. Paul "City Pages" 

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Urban Sun
Guilty of Dreaming
Bodin/Hornisch Records
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If you go to Urban Sun's website and click on the "Bands We Like" link, you'll be taken to a promotional site related to defunct skiffle quartet the Beatles. Always wise to steal from the best. The group also borrows from R.E.M. and Oasis, and bears a coincidental resemblance to greater-Illinois power poppers the Shoes, who were recording little pop gems on a four-track in their living room back in the mid-'70s.
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In the Beatles tradition, three members of Urban Sun pull songwriting shifts. "Shine Like the Stars" comes from the pen of bassist Chris Hornisch, whose nasal, vaguely Liverpudlian singing puts tenderness and snottiness into effective equilibrium. As the simile in the song's title indicates, Hornisch knows to keep it simple. Another lyricist might have gone with "shine like that movie where that foreign actor with the big nose played the crazy concert pianist," but that might not have sung well. Hornisch also turns in some McCartney-inspired melodic bass runs, while the guitarists mainly keep it crisp and clean. The drummer lays back in admirable service to the song's unassuming beauty. The bridge seems imported from another song, but them Beatles did that, too, and it's a real nice bridge. It even seems to levitate a bit, not all the way to the stars, but in that general direction.
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-excerpts from a review by Dylan Hicks
Minneapolis/St. Paul "City Pages"
February 2, 2005