KillerStar Comes Alive on Live at the 100 Club

I can now say that KillerStar is a great live band. I base this on having seen the band live, in New York a few months ago at the Cutting Room and now also having been listening to their new album, Live at the 100 Club. For me, personally, the “liveness” of the band has taken on an added dimension as I have had somewhat frequent interactions with founders Rob Fleming, who is also the lead singer, and James Sedge, who is also the drummer. I have discovered through the process of creating this blog that the relationship between fan and artist can be far more interactive than I realized for most of my life. In the case of KillerStar, I feel a kind of connection that amplifies the sensations evoked by a live performance.

At the risk of getting philosophical, I think that’s part of what either going to a concert or listening to a live album does, even for someone with no actual connection to the performer. The “live” aspect injects blood into the veins of the songs. These are not just sounds we are hearing, but human artistic achievements— the result of someone’s labor. Real people’s work product. The songs do not simply seem to be energetic, they are genuine, emotional expressions. Energy can be simulated in a studio over multiple takes. Harmonies can be created on a machine. Musicians can play their parts on different continents without hearing what the other musicians are doing for the same song. None of this is the case with a live performance— these guys don’t just seem to be on fire, they are on fire.

So, that’s true generally but also specifically with this album. KillerStar’s self-titled debut album, which was released last year, was one of the three new albums I listened to the most in 2024 (the other two coming from a couple of up-and-coming bands called The Rolling Stones and The Cure). Inevitably, as with almost any good album (except for a few by Bowie which I listen to more than is probably healthy), KillerStar has found its place in my larger rotation but I don’t listen to it as much as when it was new. Yet I’ve found myself listening to the new live album as if I hadn’t heard the songs before.

The first five songs are live versions of songs from the debut album. They are not wild deviations from their studio-version counterparts. Most live albums I own are longer than the studio albums they’re meant to showcase. That’s not the case with Live at the 100 Club, which is both shorter, and not actually recorded from a tour at all. It has taken this long for me to get to what, when I first started writing about KillerStar, was a lead-off feature about the band— in addition to Rob and James, KillerStar has brought together musicians who have played with Bowie. Not the same group for each of their limited engagements, but in this case the band includes Bowie alumni Mike Garson, Mark Plati, Kevin Armstrong, and Emm Gryner, in addition to Dom Beken, Ulrika Bergelind, Simon Bates, Claire Hirst and Andy Visick. This is not a touring band, so the live album is going to be the best chance for many to get a sense of what the band is like in person.

Anyway, this brings me back to the album’s length. I have been going back and forth about whether its brevity is a feature or a bug. As I was thinking about writing this very review, I was playing with the idea of noting two minor criticisms, one of which is that the album is too short. But as I find myself playing it over and over I have come to realize just the opposite— it’s actually a good thing to come to the end of an album wanting more. To make an imperfect Bowie analogy, Never Let Me Down isn’t better than Station to Station just because it has more songs!

The other possible criticism I had in mind was that the songs are almost too pristine. For whatever psychological reason, I actually enjoy the little imperfections of a live performance as experienced in concert. Some of that has to do with a venue rather than a performance itself. But these songs seem nearly flawless. To this end I suppose Dave Eringa gets credit for an excellent job mixing the album, and Miles Showell for mastering it. I’m not an expert on the technical aspects of making an album, but to my amateur ears it seems like these guys should get gold stars.

Of all things, this aspect of the album gets me to thinking about the Talking Heads concert film album, Stop Making Sense. That album has received some criticism for being polished after the fact so much that it might not really count as a live album. But to this day I probably listen to it more than any actual Talking Heads studio album and it appears on many best-albums-of-all-time lists. The point is, whatever went into making it resulted in an end result I like to hear. The same goes with Live at the 100 Club. Just writing about it makes me want to hear it again, which I’m gonna do once I finish up writing!

And all that said I’ve saved the best for last. The album closes with a Mike Garson piano solo. Garson played with the band when I saw them in New York, too, and I was struck by how his playing is recognizably distinct. Such is the case throughout the album, but near the end Garson just lets it rip. More than a few lyrical (and musical) Easter eggs, or the fact of the Bowie alumni’s participation, Garson’s solo cements the link between KillerStar, which is not at all a tribute band, and David Bowie. Garson’s piano playing is as recognizable as a human voice. I once had the honor of interviewing him and I asked him about this— how does he do this? He said he didn’t know. I’m not sure whether to believe him on that point, but I will say that it’s quite a way to end a live album.

But wait— there’s more— the album truly comes to an end with a reprise of “Everybody Loves a Hero.” Wait? Did the song already appear on the album? Uh…no. But here the reprise evokes the sense that all the contributors were coming together to land the plane. And it is the version of one of their songs that differs most from its studio counterpart. Well done. Like I said, I’m left wanting more.

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One note about the venue— the 100 Club in London is historic. Everyone has played there including Bowie. I recently posted an interview with London chronicler Paul Gorman who wrote a guide to Bowie’s London, and the 100 Club is part of the self-guided tour. So that’s another connection.

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One other note: I’ve embedded a video montage that appears to be of the band’s return engagement at the 100 Club from earlier this year rather than from the performance captured on the live album. The video noticeably includes Garson, Plati and Armstrong but also fellow Bowie-alumnus Earl Slick, who is not on the album. I included this video clip in part because of its visual elements.