Starfucker   

Starfucker

Badman Recording Co.

 
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If the scientific theory that we only use 10% of our brain’s capacity is true, this self-titled release by Portland, Oregon’s Starfucker is an emphatic, joyous celebration of the other 90%. Combining multi-layered vocals with a colorful and poppy explosion of eclectic, electric instrumentals, Starfucker seems almost to burst with right-brained brightness.

Many of the album’s tracks are threaded together through the use of samples—heavily distorted and sometimes unrecognizable—of what sounds like a philosophy lecture being given by some lovably eccentric University professor from days long past. Though they’re fun to pick out, the lecture samples ultimately do too much work for the album, defining it almost as a running theme or explanation, and sometimes dominating it much like a voice-over. The personality of the lectures almost threatens to overpower the personality of the band. Similarly, the production has the volume of lead vocalist Bergore Renaldski washed out slightly too much and the intensity of the electronics just a little too high, tending to drown him out amid all of the awesome backing sound. Throughout much of Starfucker, the vocals come across as a watercolor-soft artistic afterthought, content to stand shyly in the background of an otherwise very assertive album. However, when the band’s vocals do come forward to take center stage, as on tracks like “U Ba Khin” and “Pop Song”, the band confidently shines its absolute brightest – and the effect is stunning.

Standout tracks abound throughout the album. The mostly instrumental, exuberantly clap-happy “Mike Ptyson”, a song that bears listening  (repeatedly) any time you might need a little applause as you go about your life, will make even the daily subway commute feel somehow…happy.  The aforementioned “U Ba Khin”, where Renaldski’s killer falsetto reveals itself for the first time, is like a hidden golden ace tucked away inside Starfucker’s metaphoric sleeve.  “Holly”, a dance-in-place fist-pumper whose vocals once again impressively climb a few octaves, also begins to show off a little more of Starfucker’s lyrical style. It moves away from repetitive verses layered over dance-y electronic music and into a song that seems to contain the hint of a story, opening with the lines “L.A. hasn’t killed me yet.”  Continuing to build along this line, “Pop Song” seems to be the most well-rounded example of just that—a pop song—that Starfucker contains. It is also lyrically the most well fleshed-out track, the first where the band seems to make its own philosophical thesis statement: “Got some big plans/for you nice house/and some good friends/you got a lot to live for/You even have health insurance/Oh, what a bore/You could have so much more.” The sweetly sad “Miss You” rounds down the album, with the samples having been slowed down until they are beyond recognition, as though a dying robot has been left to run and has no battery power left. 

Intuitive and skillful at the same time, Starfucker is vivid, imperfect, and yet magnetically beautiful. They have gone into that untapped 90% of the brain and brought us back an album that is playful, polychromatic and punchy.

–Rebekah Brown