Band : Star Fucking Hipsters
Album title : Until We’re Dead
Label : Fat Wreck Chords
Distributor : Sonic Rendezvous
Release date : 30/09/2008
Release : CD

Excerpt from the bio delivered with our promo copy of Star Fucking Hipsters’ debut album Until We’re Dead : “Straight out of the squats of NYC, Star Fucking Hipsters are a veritable who’s who of the Punk/ Ska/ Crust scene…Originally the brain-child of Leftover Crack vocalist Sturgeon (writes all of the band’s lyrics) and drummer Brandon Chevalier-Kolling, SFH was temporarily derailed by Brandon’s tragic and untimely death. Eventually, after reuniting with original LOC drummer Ara Babajian (The Slackers) and friend Frank Piegaro (The Degenerics), SFH was off and running. The further addition of female vocalist Nico de Gallo [besides being a veteran tattoo artist (check out some of her stuff at myspace.com/nicothecrow), she’s also been/ is still with Another Dying Democracy, The Randalls, Casa De Chihuahua] and bassist Yula Beeri (World/ Inferno Friendship Society) culminated in the frantic and explosive sound that defines their debut full-length Until We’re Dead. The 13 tracks reflect the band’s many influences, while maintaining a concise and directed sound…”

In essence, the band [which has a fluent membership, depending on who’s available at the moment – actually the line-up has already grown to include additional people such as Chris Portier, Alex Charpentier (played drums on a recent tour when Babajian was unable to join), and Brian Allen (I’ve no idea what instruments they play though)] is a Punk act of the original order: keeping ideals of leftist politics and the ethics of true Punk [which has little to do with the broadened definition given to the term over the years in order to meet capitalistic ends, but based rather on socio-political awareness and activism…in other words, the band’s members are all anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-facist, anti-war for profit (or oppression of people, or religion), anti-nations (and their ill-gotten arbitrary borders), against the kind of bullies which would try to make profit at the expense of innocent people or this planet which gives us life, and pro-choice] alive. Musically, the band’s influences therefore come from Political Punk, Crust, Ska, but also from Metal, Garage, and Indie-Rock. In their own words (as posted on myspace.com/starfuckinghipsters) the music sounds like “Leftover Crack, Degenerics, Nausea, Hot Snakes, Pavement, Madness, Jawbreaker, ‘80s Pop, ‘60s Mod, ‘90s Crust & much, but not too much…more!!!”, and no, they don’t sound like a hybridisation of all that at the same time! I mean, it would be impossible for any one song to contain such different sounds all at once, wouldn’t you agree?

So, expect the band to be rather versatile, changing the overall “influence” as needed from song to song! You wíll get a couple of Ska-influenced songs, but even there other influences will come through (“Snitch To The Suture” starts off like Garage Metal trackand ends with someone playing flagellae on the guitar, while “Zombie Christ”(starts of with a Metalled-up Punk riff – which returns within the song – before it switches to the typical Ska play…and actually, it would be more correct to state that the Ska bit of this song is in a minority against the more excited Punk riffing). A couple of songs have the additional instrumentation of piano (intro/ outro of the title track), clavichord (short passage during “Two Cups Of Tea”) and organ (“Only Sleep”, “Broken”), and you’ll even find some viola play on the album closing “Death Or Fight”, which also happens to be the songs “Epic” track with its 8:07 length (allowing for some stylistic changes within)! Then you’ll find your calmer songs (take “Only Sleep”, for best example) next to your more abrasive/ aggressive ones. What with both a male and female lead singer, and both able to go from clean to acidid, and from front to background (or even duetting), you can perhaps imagine the songs to be quite versatile indeed? In fact, the guys would have to post their entire album to display their versatility to the fullest (I understand it wàs actually posted as such, for a while at least, on punnknews.org), but their MySpace only provides mp3 files of the album’s title track, “Two Cups Of Tea” (the calmest song on the album, remember), and a live video of “Immigrants & Hypocrites” (that one at least containing some Crust influences as well).

A good thing of this review coming out this late (belated thanks to the postal services of our country withholding a total of three packages for over a month - without any reason or excuse, I might add), is that I can announce you retro-minded collectors that the album was also released on vinyl somewhere half November! I for one, am gonna try to get myself a copy of that, because in my book this band deserves to be in that “Best Albums Of 2008”-list of mine! That not only because of the values the band’s members holds dear (and the kind of life/ living situation this entails), but also because of their great musicianship and wonderful songwriting abilities!

98/100

Tony.