The writer and poet Jonathan Swift began writing poems for his dear friend, and possibly secret wife, Esther Johnson (known as to him as Stella) every year on her birthday, starting in 1719. The works are small treasures, full of love and life even hundreds of years later. Trash Can Sinatras’ singer Francis Reader and producer/Noonday Underground leader Simon Dine are both big fans of the poems and decided to set excerpts from them to music. The two had worked together before so they already knew that Reader’s warm and woody vocals would fit well with Dine’s mixture of loops, orchestral samples, and trip hop-inspired production. They called the band Fellow Mortals and their 14-song 2026 album Stella’s Birth-Day melds tricky wordplay…

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