Bonfires at night beside the road. Lindsey Buckingham, Jeff Lynne and Bruce Springsteen and Wings. Green grass and cool earth. Neil Young and The New York Dolls, with a slight nod to such contemporary bands as Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips. Night time sky. Melodic and rocking and confessional and enlightening. Bright Eyes, Tom Petty, and Alex Chilton, with the ghostly presence of Hank Williams in the background. Like a perfect double down the left field line in an empty ballpark.
"Every second of this remarkable album cries out to be listened to, experienced, and cherished. Everything here is always doing its part; it's down to the careful listener to find and explore that everything. For these songs will never let that listener down and never stale. Always they'll inspire, and always they'll reward."
-- Bucketfull of Brains, UK Sept. 07
Legendary New York City DJ Vin Scelsa picks Jeffrey Dean Foster's Million Star Hotel in his top ten discoveries of 2006.
"Wow, this album for me is such a big discovery, I like it so much."
-- Bob Harris, BBC 2 Radio
(BBC 2 DJ Bob Harris played "Long Gone Sailor" from Million Star Hotel on his Saturday night show. Bob is one of the UK's most influential and respected DJs.)
"Million Star Hotel is absolutely not to be overlooked."
-- Fred Mills, HARP Magazine
"Sprawling and audacious, almost dazzlingly ambitious, Jeffrey Dean Foster's Million Star Hotel is the kind of record with depth, soul, and a kind of spiritual quality that they just don't make anymore. Stunningly beautiful...undeniably great. "
-- Luke Torn, Pop Culture Press
"Avoiding the shortcuts and vanity pitfalls that plague many self-released projects, Jeffrey Dean Foster delivers a strong personal statement with wide-ranging appeal on Million Star Hotel. The foundation is classic rock - a musical antiquity for some - but like Jeff Tweedy, Foster knows how to sweep out the cobwebs and rattle-test the walls."
-- Jerry Withrow, NO DEPRESSION
"The album is elegantly stoked by co-producers Mitch Easter and Brian Landrum to spotlight Foster's honey-sweet high tenor, his classic-rock-leaning arrangement skills and his feel for rescuing poetic truths from longing, heartbreak and reflection."
-- Magnet Magazine
"Foster occupies some pretty rarified air. While effortlessly conjuring pleasant aural images of Neil Young, the Byrds, Brian Wilson, and Chris Bell, Foster, over the course of a few listenings, admirably establishes his own identity as a literate songwriter for whom hooks fly off his fingertips like a magician tossing glitter over a room full of awe-struck kids."
-- Rick Koster, The Day, New London, Conn.
"Merging classic rock, roots music and pop experimentation with Foster's reliably brilliant songwriting, the album recalls the likes of Big Star, Wilco, Neil Young and even the Flaming Lips. Worth your time. Foster does not disappoint."
-- Andy Turner, Pop Culture Press
"Million Star Hotel is easily one of the best albums ever to come out of the fertile North Carolina music scene, and it deserves the kind of exposure that the work of home-state peers such as Ryan Adams, Ben Folds and Tift Merritt has enjoyed."
-- Parke Puterbaugh, Go Triad/News and Record
"More than any album this year, Million Star Hotel offers a far-reaching expression of the greatness of rock 'n' roll. This is as close to perfection as rock 'n' roll should be allowed to come. It's the real deal."
-- Ed Bumgardner,
Winston-Salem Journal
"He combines Big Star's Holocaust and Neil Young's After the Gold Rush moodiness with the catchy-rock smarts of Tom Petty. There's a lush feeling typically not associated with roots rock. Sparklehorsey moments -- most notably the distorto vocals of the raunched-up "Little Priest" -- creep in, but it's worth noting that Foster has been dealing in found sounds and other atmospherics since Mark Linkous was little more than a Sparklepony."
-- Rick Cornell, The Independent Weekly
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