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
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Million Star Hotel is like a multi-faced diamond reflecting light into a hall of mirrors.  It¹s full of shimmers of sound floating phantom-like through the ether, suddenly becoming corporeal, solid, robust, and then as
quickly bursting again into slivers and insubstantial after-sounds, then turning into before-sounds again.

 
A classic pop album from North Carolina, in the lineage of How Men Fail and Travels In The South, that unashamedly mines the tradition, the glories, of the greats. This is a record made by someone who grew up in the 70¹s, whose
teenage years must have been spent in cars with radios. You can hear late Beach Boys, Neil Young, Marc Bolan, Glam Rock, and you hear of a time when music and romance were inextricably mingled.

 Put together over a number of years, as and when locale allowed, it¹s a large project and a large album; 14 songs and nearly 70 minutes. They¹re all real big songs, full of diversity, adventure, and surprise. Well-made songs
of the night illuminated by those million stars but created like sculptures or collages; there¹s always something more. Be it atmospherics, distortions or add-ons, there¹s always another teasing little sound in the corner.

There are friends here too. Lynn Blakey, recently of Tres Chicas, sings, notably on “The Summer Of The Son Of Sam”, Don Dixon and Chris Phillips take brief turns, Mitch Easter plays guitar and steel and helps produce. But
it¹s Foster¹s album and it¹s his persona and his strengths that define it. His tender, warm tenor voice is always entrancing.  He writes a good and memorable lyric: “bet on a bobtail loser”, “can¹t even count on losers anymore”, “you¹re on the road but I¹m on the street”. He can take classic lines and make them new; we know where titles like “Long Gone Sailor”, “All I Do Is Dream”, “When Will I Be A Man” come from, and we smile
with recognition and it helps us, but it wouldn¹t change a thing if we came completely fresh.

The start is gentle. First an ambience, a little breaking whisper that gradually grows into the tale of a “Lily Of The Highway”. The major motifs are all here gathered; girls, cars, growth, loss. And its questing and its
variance are the promise of what¹s to follow.

A promise absolutely redeemed almost immediately by “The Summer Of The Son Of Sam”. That summer was 1977, when Elvis and Skynyrd both fell to earth. Over six minutes the song rises from a quiet meditative night with cicadas,
lit only by a dying star, into an epic.

 Memorable moments persist; there¹s a splendid twist in “Little Priest” as it begins like glam rock, with echoes of T.Rex, and becomes a California surf ballad. “Don¹t Listen To Me” with its After The Gold Rush piano, might
be channelling Danny Whitton. “Long Gone Sailor” seems at least part-written under the influence of Holland, and if “Lost In My Own Town” doesn¹t allude
to Big Star then I¹m a Dutchman.

Yet every second of this remarkable album cries out to be listened to, experienced, and cherished. Everything here is always doing its part; it¹s down to the careful listener to find and explore that everything. For these
songs will never let that listener down and never stale. Always they¹ll inspire, and always they¹ll reward.
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If Ryan Adams had been humble (and smart) enough to distill the best 14 songs from his three recent records onto one we might have Million Star Hotel, by Winston-Salem’s Jeff Foster, as musically/thematically articulate as Adams’ trifecta is sprawling. Working with co-producers Mitch Easter and Brian Landrum, the former Right Profile/Carneys/Pinetops leader showcases his honey-sweet high tenor, his classic rock-leaning arrangement skills and his instinct for rescuing poetic truths from life’s crush. “Lily of the Highway” is so luminous you almost overlook the loneliness and longing seeping from its pores. Both the powerpoppy “The Summer of the Son of Sam” and the anthemic “Lost in My Own Town” have distinctive ‘70s underpinnings—respectively, Big Star and The Move. And piano-and-trumpet anti-war meditation “Milk and Honey” smartly recalls Tom Petty circa Southern Accents. Self-released by Foster (go to www.jeffreydeanfoster.com), Million Star Hotel is absolutely not to be overlooked.
By Fred Mills
Harp Magazine
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The latest package from Notlame arrived and I have just been blown away by the latest cd by Jeffrey Dean Foster, "Million Star Hotel." This album rocks. It's beautiful. It has inspired me to write this little snippet to encourage others to check it out. I hear similarities to The Jayhawks "Sound Of Lies". I hear bits of Big Star/Chilton. I hear Springsteen. Lots and lots of jangly and chiming guitars and piano in the background. Mitch Easter played on and mixed this disc. I'm listening to "Lily Of The Highway" and just when I think the song can't get better, *another* guitar chimes in the mix. 
 
There's no filler on this disc. Every song is either a classic or at the very least interesting. I can't imagine this disc leaving my car anytime soon. My very highest recommendation, 5 stars.
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