Arts & Entertainment

Starfucker: Self-Titled

Test Spin

November 20, 2008 - 12:00am
By Kathleen Jercich

Following in the indie tradition of bands like MGMT and Milosh, Portland natives Starfucker combine plunky Casio riffs with slow, barely varied backbeats on their new self-titled album. Though the baseline may be monotonous and traditional song structure nonexistent, there’s something soothing about the constant repetition; combined with the breathy, incomprehensible vocals, it lulls the listener into a kind of synthetic pleasure-coma. The album does have its clever moments: the opening song, “Florida,” ends with a clip of what sounds like Hugh Laurie inquiring about metric measurements, and the clap-beats on “Mike Ptyson” will stick in one’s head for hours. Ultimately, aside from a few noteworthy candidates — the wonderfully discordant “Hard Smart Beta,” for example, or the snarky, seductive “Pop Song” — it’s the sort of album that, for better or for worse, blends together into a dreamy half hour of simple melodies supplemented with the occasional, inexplicable sound-bite of laughing children.


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