Send "Starfucker " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Cokemachineglow |
 After a well-publicized—at least in their hometown of Portland—waffling over the explicitness of their name, chosen, as described by frontguy Joshua Hodges, on a mischievous lark, Starfucker suddenly gained more fame-ground than their fame-fornicating name foretold. Also annoyingly named “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” found its way to a Target commercial care of also-Portland-headquartered Wieden+Kennedy, the ad agency responsible for the hot guy riding a horse Old Spice commercials and employer every creative twenty-something drools after. (With a hip name and stylish punctuation like that, they’ve gotta have ping pong tables and a Wii in the breakroom.) So, beset with W+K bank and overnight notoriety, Starfucker passed up all the rich irony of their namesake and pussed out, first trying PYRAMID on for size, and eventually going with the just-as-pointless Pyramiddd. When people stopped going to their shows and when the band realized those names were even stupider than what they originally had, they reverted, reserving “STRFKR” for all-ages venues. I feel like a “natch” should go in there somewhere.Reptilians, the band’s first full-length for Polyvinyl, carries with it all the promise of the hype so lavishly handed them in the short three years they’ve been alive. It’s got some great hooks, some hard-hitting synth lines; it’s got a conceptual trajectory and a thoroughly, hip-ly vintage mix, all warm and muddy, obscuring how direly Hodges seems to be pushing his falsetto; it’s got moments when the purposeful haze is pushed aside to really drive a melody home. For an album so ready for appropriation into Urban Outfitters speakers and the jukeboxes of chic dives, it’s sincerely hardworking, a well-paced, non-stop showcase for the Starfucker’s many talents and tastes writ across a blinking, sans-serif marquee. There are even some well-intentioned “mistakes” sprinkled along the way. This is the sound of a band using spoons to dig themselves out of the hole they originally dug with a fleet of Caterpillars: somewhere sweetly between MGMT, Passion Pit, and Ratatat, Reptilians is a batch of competent dance-pop—not as groundbreaking as fans have hoped, not as obnoxious as non-fans may’ve assumed—overcompensating for all the patience they’ve tested and the goodwill they squandered on their looping baby-steps back to the Starfucker moniker....full text |
| Prettymuchamazing |
| The problem with Starfucker always started with their name. Not that Starfucker’s a bad name; in fact, it’s a pretty great one if you’re making the glamorous rock ‘n’ roll it suggests. But it didn’t match the twee-synth of debut album Starfucker. On their third studio outing, Starfucker are starting to live up to their name, crafting some stadium–sized synth-pop. They’re still dealing with some of the problems that plagued their earlier works, but it’s a step in the right direction....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| It's been four years since the surprising commercial success of MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, and a steady stream of vaguely pysch, synth-loving bands continues to flow from that record's neon wake. In the corner of higher aspirations, you have Columbia-signed fresh-facers Foster the People, whose labelmate status with MGMT gives off a bit of a "the calls are coming from inside the house" feeling. Portland synth-poppers Starfucker, on the other hand, have been doing the spacey headband thing for almost as long as MGMT have (or, more accurately, were)-- and, yet, it proves difficult to resist comparison. Their 2008 self-titled debut had the same shoddy, in-development synthy sound that many of us heard from those Wesleyan boys when their Time to Pretend EP was circulating around 2005; on Starfucker's sophomore effort, Reptilians, there are a few moments (the drum sounds on opening track "Born", the mortality-questioning nature of "Death as a Fetish") where that influence is extended to MGMT's forebears, the Flaming Lips. To dismiss Reptilians-- and Starfucker's general style, by extension-- as the result of well-executed pastiche would be ignoring that, believe it or not, it's actually a pretty good album. The sonic fidelity here is about a million times better than that of their debut-- an improvement no doubt abetted by the band's jump to recovering-but-still-fighting indie Polyvinyl. What you're getting here: a fair amount of intricate synth work paired with catchy alt-indie melodies that would fit in perfectly as transitional music to almost any show on the CW. At times, the former can overshadow the latter-- minus some blaring MIDI'd-to-death horns, the twinkling tunnel of "Bury Us Alive" is the kind of rabbit hole that bands like Bear in Heaven should think about heading down more often. They clearly demonstrate the capability to make "hits," too; the anthemic ascent of "Julius" and "Mystery Cloud" seem like the kind of stuff that, for better and for worse, would get stuck near the top of the Hype Machine or elbo.ws charts for a while. There's something innately appealing to the best of this band's melodies-- whatever it is almost completely lacks originality, granted, but it's hard not to see the small promises hidden within this record's modest highlights....full text |
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