River Owens, an Ohio State student and the bassist of emo band Starling, strums the bass and belts into the mic at Marlboro Manor on Oct. 7, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Courtney Barger
Local emo band Starling wants to shine its light on Columbus’ ever-growing music scene.
Starling consists of bassist River Owens, guitarist Beck Watson and drummer Mason Lurie, all of whom are Ohio State students and collectively contribute to the band’s vocals. Owens said the band is mixing and recording a currently untitled, four-song EP set to release on streaming services by mid-March; this release will mark Starling’s first-ever official body of work. Before then, the trio will perform at Donatos Bar and Basement — located at 2084 N. High St. and affectionately known as “Club D” — Friday.
“It’s gonna be a bit of a new chapter for us because I’ve never experienced people listening to us,” Lurie said. “It’s gonna be really cool because I think it’ll open it up to going to other states. And playing live, I feel like it will get us more traction than it used to.”
Possessing a mutual love for emo and punk music, the band’s members have taken the last year to develop a distinct sound that still fits under the “emo umbrella,” Lurie said.
“At the beginning, it kind of took a while to get our sound cohesive in the slightest because we all like different things and did a bunch of weird covers and messed around a bunch,” Lurie, a third-year in ecological engineering, said. “I think it’s added to our sound a lot now.”
Mason Lurie, an Ohio State student and the drummer of emo band Starling, bangs the drums at Marlboro Manor on Nov. 18, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Courtney Barger
Emo music can be described as “emotional” and “confessional” rock stemming from hardcore punk, Owens, a fourth-year in natural resource management, said. They said Starling felt drawn to everything the genre has to offer.
“We went from emo punk to emo, to screamo back to emo,” Owens said. “I think now we’re just sitting at emo because emo means a lot.”
Watson, a third-year in city and regional planning, agreed.
“I got so sick of trying to determine what genres were what in ourselves and in other music,” said Watson. “It’s all rock ‘n’ roll and it’s all emotional.”
Owens said the band’s Friday show at Club D will also function as a fundraiser and bake sale, with all proceeds going toward a Japanese Red Cross Society relief fund for victims of the Jan. 1 earthquake in Ishikawa, Japan.
Watson and Owens said this performance will take place almost a year after the band’s first show, which was held at the same venue.
“That’s a pretty cool full-circle moment,” Owens said.
Though Starling’s first performances were limited to Ohio State-affiliated events through clubs such as The Amateur Radio Organization for Undergraduate Student Entertainment, or AROUSE, Owens said the band has since branched out to make a name for itself in Columbus’ emo scene.
“We started playing the OSU shows because our friends in bands were doing that,” Watson said. “Through those opportunities, we were able to slowly expand our network, I’d say, and do more stuff.”
The trio came together via a post on Yik Yak — an anonymous, discussion-based social media platform popular among college students — in which Owens stated they were looking for somebody to play music with. Watson and Lurie, having already been friends since high school, took up the offer.
“We seriously played together at my studio apartment for a year,” Owens said. “It took so long to get our sh*t together. I hadn’t really seriously played the bass, I made that Yik Yak talking about, ‘Who wants to jam’ because I knew nobody was gonna f*cking respond to it. Then somebody responded to it. I was like, ‘Sh*t, I have to learn how to play my instrument.’”
Reflecting on the band’s growth over the past year, Lurie said the group has received endless support, even being told that Starling has become a role model for aspiring musicians in Columbus.
“We’ve recently been seeing a lot of younger people kind of reaching out to us,” Lurie said. “Like, ‘We’re trying to start an emo band, you guys are an inspiration to us.’ My heart is melting. It’s cool to be able to be on the other end now because I remember being so in awe of so many people.”
Beck Watson, an Ohio State student and the guitarist of emo band Starling, rolls around on the floor with guitar in hand at Marlboro Manor on Nov. 18, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Courtney Barger
Owens said Starling proudly claims the emo genre, even if its public perception is not the most accurate.
“I feel like it’s misunderstood,” Owens said. “They think of like, I don’t know, some sh*t like f*cking Black Veil Brides, or some sh*t or some stereotypical emo band. They’re not wrong, but there’s so much more.”
Despite the band’s willingness to experiment with sound, Watson said it is ultimately attached to the emo label.
“We’ve got this duality of not wanting to label ourselves, but also feeling an attachment to the labels because we’re inspired by it,” Watson said.
Lurie agreed.
“I think it’s less about the label and more about just the community we end up in,” Lurie said. “We’ve kind of [fallen] into our niche a little more and met a lot more emo bands and I feel like we’ve met a lot more people sort of in the emo community, I guess, that come out to shows.”
Due to the raw emotion it demands, emo music has become an effective and enduring outlet for the band, Owens said.
“To be even given a chance to contribute to it or be as vulnerable with music while still being intense with it — it resonates,” Owens said.
More information about Starling and its upcoming release can be found on the band’s Instagram page. Admission to the Friday show at Club D is priced at $5, with doors opening at 7 p.m.
