Band: Starfucker
From: Portland, OR
Sound: Disarmingly upbeat and catchy electro-pop pummeled home with dual drumsets and layers upon layer of entrancing loops and samples.
Similar Artists: MGMT, Ratatat, Of Montreal, Air
Listen Now: “German Love”

Before you discount Starfucker solely because of their name - which for me conjures Sunset Strip tanning beds and the kind of malicious artifice that looms in the air like cheap perfume, but hey feel free to add your own - consider that this is pretty much exactly what chief songwriter Josh Hodges expects.

In a sense, the word “Starfucker” is really nothing more than a simple defense mechanism, a shield against inflated expectations and skewed priorities and a realignment towards common sense. You see, after years spent toiling in bands with an eye on “making it big” while surrendering the joy of creating music in the process, Hodges chose a name as mainstream-repellant as Starfucker to symbolize the opposite of such a mindset. As a result, it’s become a provocative hook on which to hang your preconceptions, lighten your load, and stay awhile.

And trust me, once you get past the name, you’re gonna want to stay awhile. Starfucker is FUN music, plain and simple. It is the belief that a coaxing beat and undeniable groove are the only things in life worth pursuing at that particular moment, a belief that’s provided the band with the sort of endless energy and unflappable enthusiasm usually reserved for cult leaders and speed freaks.

It’s also a study in contrasts: a name better suited to a hair-metal band from Los Angeles rather than a trio of basketball-loving dudes from Portland, Oregon (multi-instrumentalists Ryan Bjornstad and Shawn Glassford round out the trio) in a genre known for it’s backdrop of synthetic beats rather than a live setup that requires the same number of drum kits (two) as such unwieldy hippie titans as the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers Band. Yes, Starfucker is a ridiculous band name; they get it, they’re the ones who picked it out. Now get over it and have a good time!

EAR FARM tracked down Hodges as the band zoomed along the varying dead zones of Montana’s wilderness en route to a Halloween show in Missoula. Like a Verizon ad gone bad, Hodges went in and out of cell phone range but did an admirable job keeping the conversation light despite a lingering cold and situational circumstances that might have you believe he was living a horror movie (a trio of guys speeding through rural Montana on Halloween night, out of cell phone range and in pursuit of a club called the Badlander, I mean really, the script just writes itself)….

EF: So what are you doing for Halloween? You have a show in Missoula?

JH: Yeah I don’t really know much about it, I think it’s going to be a big party though. I got a cheerleader unitard thing that I’m going to wear, not sure what I’m going to do with the bottom half though.

EF: May be best to cover up the bottom half. So will you guys have matching unitards?

JH: No, I got it in Denver somewhere, I’m not sure what they’re going to do.

EF: How was your CMJ experience overall? Good times?

JH: Yeah definitely, I think it went well, I got a little sick during the shows but it still went well I think. I used to live in New York too so it was fun to see old friends and to see the city again.

EF: How many shows did you play last week?

JH: I think we played five. We were supposed to play six or seven but two got cancelled.

EF: Did you have any favorite bands you saw there over the last week?

JH: Yeah, our last night there was Saturday and we didn’t play or anything so we tried to go to Cake Shop and it was so hectic so we called our friend who’s in PWRFL Power, he was over in Williamsburg so we walked over there across the bridge and Jay Reatard was playing some venue over there and it was fucking awesome, really great show.

Starfucker at the PDX Showcase @ Knitting Factory, 24 October 2008

EF: So I saw you guys at the Portland showcase last Friday and I was blown away, I thought you guys were amazing but noticed I spent half the time staring intently at your setup and trying to decipher…

JH: (laughs) What the hell is going on?

EF: Yeah exactly. Do you use a bed of samples and stuff like that or what?

JH: Yeah, we used to just use this Roland loop station in which you can have a loop and build on top of it for live shows, it’s great but it only has a certain amount of memory and limited space so we started using iPods too, which I try to hide that because I know it’s kind of lame. I mean I’m not even an Apple person, but it’s super convenient. I just never want to use a laptop for anything, I don’t like how they look onstage…

EF: Yeah, that lends itself to being classified in a whole different genre, laptop rock ….

JH: Exactly. And we all have noise devices, Shawn has a tape machine in which he can mess with the pitch and he got all these weird tapes when we were in Japan, like Japanese children school songs, and Ryan has a bunch of different records, really weird stuff.

EF: One thing I was thinking while watching you guys was that the easy way out would be just to use a bunch of drum loops or samples but yet you guys insist on bringing not one but two kits to play. What was the reasoning?

JH: I don’t know, that just kind of happened, having two kits. I like electronic music but I really like when they add a live drummer, it adds a whole different organic element and a lot of energy, it just makes it all better.

EF: Have you ever had a nightmare scenario onstage where everything goes horribly out of sync between the loops and live beats?

JH: Nothing colossal I would say, there are some songs that are more free-form that build and have no real structure and we just go with it but other times it just doesn’t work, those are the ones we tend to fuck up the most. We don’t always play those ones live. We try to do as much as we can live, you know we don’t want like a huge band of 10 people all doing different things, so whatever we cant do we put on the loops.

EF: Well it’s also a testament to your musicianship that you guys don’t speed up or slow down to the point that it’s a huge factor.

JH: Yeah, whenever you play with loops and pre-recorded stuff, it’s the boss (laughs). You’re used to the drummer being the boss, but it’s the boss, and you have to just lock into it. But I really like doing it like this though.

EF: So when you guys are pulling up to a show and unloading the van and the sound guy sees two drumsets, turntables, samplers, does he kind of shit himself?

JH: (laughs) Yeah lots of times, but the thing is I actually do all the sound. I have a mixer onstage and everything gets thrown into that, all the mics, everything except the drums. The way our setup is, we have it so we can do house parties and we don’t really need anything from anybody. I have a huge cabinet and Shawn has a bass cabinet and everything runs through those and its loud enough to fill the room, so sometimes at a venue where there’s not many people we just end up playing on the floor. So it’s easy for the sound guy actually, they just take a line out from the mixer and mic the drums. And I mean, sound guys are so inconsistent it’s nice to have some control over it.

Starfucker showing how to be your own sound guy at a Portland house (pool) party

EF: I saw something on your Wikipedia page about a trip to Tokyo.

JH: Yeah we just got back before this tour.

EF: Let me read to you what it says: ‘Starfucker made a trip Tokyo, Japan, in the fall of 2008 to play a private show for an anonymous host. This host provided their first class airfare, accomodations, and also payed for new instruments for the band’s specific use for their show in Tokyo.’ Is this true?

JH: Wow, that sounds way more interesting than it really was, I like that. I hope they leave that up there.

EF: Sounds like you have a patron.

JH: Totally. Yeah, it was a private party at some club that normally costs like $3,000 a year to have a membership at it, the kind of place I would never go into, I guess Kanye West and Avril Lavigne were there the week before we were. It was a really weird show, we played on the floor, the place is owned by the Japanese mafia and the one guy really liked us, it was really fun. We only played that one show, really early before anyone was there but it was still fun, we got a paid trip to Japan and I think we’re going back again. Apparently, there’s some sort of Tokyo Portland connection and so we were pretty much promoting Portland to hip Japanese kids or something. And they were showing pictures of Portland behind us while we were playing too, I’m not even sure who paid for it all.

EF: So you guys are basically goodwill ambassadors for the city of Portland?

JH: (laughs) Yeah I guess so.

EF: Tell me about the Portland music scene, it gets built up quite a lot….

JH: Yeah for sure. But there is also something special about it. It’s just so supportive. Anyone can start a band, get in the paper, and start playing good shows like right away, and there’s a higher percentage of good bands here than elsewhere. Like when I lived in New York, there was so many bands, and so many bad bands. Portland is just very manageable, and the house party scene that’s sprung up there is so much more free and energetic than going to a bar; it’s more interactive, you’re in the same room on the same level and the energy is good. And it’s not like that in bars.

EF: I can’t help but make the comparison – albeit lazy – to a band like MGMT when describing your sound. When you see a band like that and they’re absolutely blowing up right now, do you think ‘hell yes, that’s us next!’ or does it kind of frighten you a bit?

JH: It definitely frightens me. I try not to think about stuff like that too much and I try to keep it more immediate. But I don’t think we have to worry about that because of our name for one, and I mean, I totally like their music and would love to be at a point to be able to play music for a living and not have to do other stuff, but I’m not really thinking about the long-term.

EF: Well you guys have such a wonderfully accessible sound that people really respond to. I could see it happening….

JH: Well it would be interesting, because of our name. It would be a good thing for a band with a name like ours to get some sort of national acclaim.

EF: As a way to break some barriers?

JH: Yeah exactly.

EF: Is that something that you guys have overtly discussed? Like maybe we should change our name?

JH: No I don’t think we’d ever do that. The whole way it started was out of frustration with the other band I was in and thinking about the future too much and not really enjoying the shows we were playing and hearing people talking about our future the whole time, it’s not what music is about. It has to be fun now or else there’s really no point. You could die tomorrow, so many things could happen, it has to just be about right now. So with our name, it was kind of a “fuck you” to that whole previous mindset. And of course, the funny thing is that this is the most successful band I’ve been in.

EF: Doesn’t that maybe have something to do with your whole change in philosophy?

JH: I think so, yeah. We’re just really having fun, its kind of contagious and people can see that we’re really having fun. I mean when I was growing up in Portland people really didn’t dance there either, it was notoriously shoegazy, so it’s been a lot of fun to watch that development. This is how it should be.

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Listen:
“German Love”

Watch: “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” official music video, directed and animated by Monstrous Media

See Also:
- CMJ Music Marathon 2008 (reviews/pics)

See Starfucker Live:
06 Nov – San Francisco, CA @ Eagle
07 Nov – San Francisco, CA @ The Hemlock
08 Nov – Los Angeles, CA @ Spaceland
09 Nov – Irvine, CA @ UCI Acrobatics Everywhere
10 Nov – San Luis Obispo, CA @ Steynberg Gallery
11 Nov – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Crepe Place
21 Nov – Portland, OR @ Someday Lounge
04 Dec – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom

Buy the album on Amazon.

Visit Starfucker on MySpace.

above photo courtesy of Ingrid Renan
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See the list of bands recently featured as EAR FARM’s Band of the Week HERE.