Customer Reviews

Starfucker

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hearing this CD was a genuine discovery of something new and exciting. It's ultra-catchy synth-pop, featuring addictive beats and lighter-than-Air vocals. Listening to these eleven tunes, I was reminded at times of previous electro-pop artists such as BeBop Deluxe, Devo and Thomas Dolby, and there's also a brief instrumental homage to ELO ("Pop Song"). At the same time, lead Starf***er Josh Hodges has also clearly got his own thing going. Basically, he and co-producer (and label head) Dylan Magierek just have unerring instincts for putting together a captivating piece of music. I defy you to listen to "German Love" and not be drawn in! I only hope that Josh's choice of a band name (which must be tough for marketing and other purposes) doesn't keep people away from this outstanding album! By the way, this is my first five-star review in quite awhile. I don't give out five stars casually, but this disc is truly amazing!

A far cry from the Carly Simon plagiarizing, ham-fisted Nine Inch Nails track of the same name, wannabe ironic/risque bedroom recordists Starf*cker punt near a dozen clunky, lo-fi but syrupy-warm pop gems our way for their laid-back, if not family-titled, debut. Homemade Casiotones, fuzzy drum machines and occasional flimsy acoustic guitar meet Rob Crow vox halfway for this fun, head-bobbing collection of tunes strong on hooks and short on words, just the way the doctor ordered.

The anesthetized bounce of "Florida" sets the tone for the record and steers everyone in just the right laid-back, gateway-drugged direction. As an added bonus, it finishes with the most hilarious wordplay on the entire album, a Monty Python-ish voice-over* filtered as if through a dying record player:

"How much wiggle is *a* wiggle? Well, you have to draw the line somewhere. So people come to some sorts of agreements about, uhh, how much of a wiggle... is a wiggle. That is to say, a thing. One wiggle. One can always reduce any one wiggle into sub-wiggles. Or see it as a subordinate wiggle in a bigger wiggle. But there's no real fixed rule about it..."

Something like this emerges from a bedroom studio every once in a blue moon to greet hipsters with fistfuls of indie street cred, usually sporting some kind of almost-clever name (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, anyone?), only to be forgotten in a few months. Questions of longevity aside, though, it's the present that matters, and right now, the simple pleasure of sloppy falsetto harmony and delicious keyboard portamento (as in the aptly-named "Pop Song") is too delectable to pass up. Starf*cker get all their portions right, too: "Hard Smart Beta" cooks in just under two minutes. Accessibility-wise, the absurdly-named "Myke Ptyson" pogos around on a snappy, "save the princess" type riff that sounds like it might've flown out of a pre-Gameboy handheld's speaker. That should tell you what you need to know.

All it takes is a taste, and you're hooked. You might not remember the specifics later, but that's not always a bad thing. Starf*cker just begs for repeat performances. Especially so on the icy cool and irresistable, slippy-slide bitpop of closer "Isabella of Castile." They know they should go, but they want to stay. Picture Pinback with Nintendo controllers in hand in lieu of guitars, and you've got these dudes. Awesome for when nothing deathly serious will get the job done, and chilling out is priority numero uno. And when isn't that the case, really?

*I've since been informed that this is part of a speech by a Buddhist named Alan Watts.

Still as good to me as ever. Just ordered this on vinyl and can't wait for the over-sized cover art to arrive. Thanks for carrying this still!!

Also, the band has unfortunately since changed it's name to PYRAMIDDD.

Simplicity with intelligent mood and fun is how I described it to a friend. Just when you're needing some rhythm it kicks in. I really enjoy it's fun youthful spirit and sense of fun with the music. I hear the fun of artists like Vampire Weekend and even The Sammies with a touch of sophistication and craziness of The Eels and even "post-rock" melody from Explosions in the Sky.

I went to Pitchfork to see what they saw about these guys. I realized, that it seems like when Pitchfork media is right about a band they are really right, but when they are wrong, man are they ever wrong. I read the review of this album on their site and wondered if this was the same album I was listening to. I honestly don't think I'll read their reviews any more with wrong they were with this band. Music is just way too subjective and one bad reviewer can ruin a whole band. That's why I'm writing this review.

Enough about them, download this album. I heard them first on a local public radio station played their music on a Sunday night. After that and since downloading this album a few days ago, I listen to nothing else.

With the crazy time we're in, this is the first smile I have had on my face this year. Thanks Star-f-er!

Download and enjoy!

Love every song! Heard them briefly on Pandora before ordering the whole album. Pleased with the entire disk, though I may be the only one still buying cd's these days.

So I've always been frustrated when I try to find out what is being said in "Hard Smart Beta" (track 8). I stumbled across the answer while watching a tv program about the moon. The audio is from the Apollo 17 mission, the last manned mission to the moon. The crew was comprised of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot/Geologist Harrison Schmitt. The team was struggling to stay on schedule when Schmitt noticed he was kicking up orange soil. The first bit of the conversation sampled is Schmitt saying in surprise "Oh.....hey.... there is ORANGE soil!". I'm not sure whether the person who responds is Evans or Cernan, but whoever it is says "well don't leave until I see it". The next soundbites are a little jumbled but one can distinctly make out "it's all over", "it's ORANGE!", "I stirred it up with my feet", and "fantastic". The astronauts took as many samples as the could and left. There is a reference that the wikipedia article of the mission cites that is a voice transcript from the mission. I didn't comb through the whole thing to find the conversation (tl;dr), but if you want to the link is : <...>
or if that link changes you can go to the wikipedia article and find the one that says "voice transcript pertaining to the geology of the landing site".

In case your curious the orange soil turned out to be ancient volcanic jet. This means that the moon could have had active volcanoes at one time, but more likely it was simply left there from collisions with a young Earth or space debris.

Hopefully I ruined the mystery of this song and eased the minds of some obsessively curious people (I include myself in that group). Also, it's a great song.

The person speaking on other tracks is Alan Watts, my favorite 20th century philosopher. This isn't a mystery though since it's written on the credits of the cd.

great great album but if you already got the Cd and was wondering if you should get it on vinyl the answer is YES!Also you get songs you cant get on cd

Awesome album. The name of the band is somewhat offputting, but they can pull off tri and sometimes quadrilineal lines that give them a unique sound. That in combination with slight syncopation and excellent lyrics make this a stellar album.

So yeah...A friend turned me on and I really enjoy it. Catchy as hell...mix a little Ratatat and a little MGMT and a touch of ELO and there you go!

This is among the best albums I have heard in a long, long time. How can you not love a band that puts bits of an Alan Watts lecture into their songs?
More people ask me "Who's that?" when I play this than pretty much anything else I'm listening to these days. It seems like everybody likes this on first listen.