Starfucker (STRFKR) released their latest album, Miracle Mile, yesterday (Feb. 19), which is now available in the usual formats as well as an über-hip cassette tape. (Remember those? They’re like 8-tracks but newer and less hip.) To celebrate and promote the launch, the members of the band created avatars to DJ their tracks live on Turntable.fm.
Turntable.fm is a fun site where you can garner DJ points (which allow you to upgrade your avatar and other fun stuff) for getting other people to “thumbs up” a track you’ve selected for the room to listen to, while chatting with everyone and potentially learning awesome things about your favorite bands. (For instance, did you know Starfucker once attempted to change their name to Pyramiddd? I didn’t. Thank you, strangers with good taste in music.) It’s highly addictive, cute looking, and interactive. The number of people in the room blew up within minutes to listen to their new stuff. It was a good digital time. I dropped some eE and smoked some iWeed and got down on my computer chair until the break of late afternoon.
Miracle Mile is definitely another step toward godliness for Starfucker, but it may be a longer walk than we’d hoped. Their dance-inducing grooves are present, though more mild than on previous records. They also seem to have adopted a more “chillwave-ish” sound than before, which isn’t all bad as they do handle it well, but could have been supplemented by the spasmodic guitar riffs that gave us goosebumps on their 2008 self-titled album.
My favorite track is “I Don’t Want to See,” which has a slow, dark drive to it. “Let’s turn the lights out / And go to sleep / Let’s turn out the lights out / Don’t want to see.” And the first single, “While I’m Alive,” is probably the most catchy track on the album and I recommend it for daily use. Their new video for “Atlantis” is entertaining. You can really tell they’re from Portlandia. Err, I mean Portland.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EL03Pl4oL4]
I haven’t heard a Starfucker song I don’t like and I don’t intend to start now. I hope they continue to produce dancing vibrations for us. Give this latest one a listen (and you can, even if you only have a cassette deck.)
