Starsailor reissue their debut album Love Is Here for its 25th year

Starsailor are putting Love Is Here back into the shops. The band's debut, recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales with producer Steve Osborne and released in October 2001, gets a 25th anniversary edition through Parlophone on October 2, remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. NME's Max Pilley reported the details on August 27.

The record has held up commercially better than its critical reputation suggested at the time. It sold more than a million copies worldwide and has since gathered over 56 million streams on Spotify, numbers that sit awkwardly next to the old line about the band being a stopgap for British guitar music.

The vinyl edition puts the original album in a gatefold sleeve and on coloured vinyl for the first time. The two-CD version is the one with the archive material: alternative live and session recordings from the BBC, bonus tracks, live photography and written recollections from frontman James Walsh.

Among the extras are previously unreleased David Kosten mixes of Fever and of the title track, 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 and NME charity compilation 1Love. The second disc, Love Is Here Live At The BBC, gathers performances from Glastonbury, T In The Park, Top Of The Pops, Later... With Jools Holland, Lamacq Live and Jo Whiley's Live Lounge, most of them previously unreleased.

The touring is built to match. Starsailor open at the London Palladium on October 2, the same day the reissue lands, then play Bexhill and a run through the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland before returning for Edinburgh, Manchester, Poole and Birmingham later in the month. They will perform the album in full with a string ensemble arranged and conducted by Joe Duddell, who has worked with New Order, Elbow, James and Richard Hawley.

This is the second anniversary edition the record has had. A 20th anniversary deluxe version arrived in 2021 with covers, rarities and five newly recorded versions. Anniversary boxes keep landing on this desk, from Tom Waits' Small Change at 50 to Elastica's expanded debut. Dated releases sit in the release calendar, with more on the rock hub.