Starfucker - Reptilians review

Reptilians, the new album from Portland, Oregon band, Starfucker, is most likely going to be labeled a dance album.  I have certain reservations about going as far as saying that the album is deeply rooted in the dance genre, but I will say that Starfucker definitely borrows elements of dance music, and any other buzzworthy fictitious genre you can think of that was popular last year.

Synths and sequencers dominate virtually every song on the album, which, depending on your taste either cheapens the album or does it a favor.  Every track is polished to a high gloss and not a single second of any song is wasted.  With an average song length of about three minutes, Starfucker gets to the point, and quick.  The songs often bombard you with a heavy bass line or a thumping drum beat, before building up with carefully placed synth accents and swirling organs and strings.  There are a lot of layers on these tracks and I found it difficult to sort through them all on my first listen, which is why I found myself coming back to this album again and again, trying to catch something new that I had missed.

This dance-pop-house fusion is certainly not new, and if you're a fan of Passion Pit or Miami Horror, then you'll find a lot to love about Reptilians.  It is an unrelenting barrage of sound that is so accessible you wouldn't be surprised to hear it at your local night club or over the loud speakers of your local department store.  That being said, if you are a fan of Passion Pit, Miami Horror, Daft Punk, et al, you may find Starfucker to be a bit repetitive as they by no means break any new ground on Reptilians.

Peppered throughout the album are short, introspective spoken word bits, mostly dealing with themes of life and death and philosophical what-ifs and what-does-it-all-means.  It doesn't cheapen the album, but it certainly doesn't do it any favors.  When I listen to bubblegum music like this, I don't expect to do any heavy mental lifting, rather I just want to sit back, relax, and let the music immerse me in a cotton candy machine from the land of rainbows, sunshine and lollipops.

Reptilians is a dance album.  It is chillwave.  It is pop music.  Whatever you want to label it, one thing is for certain, Starfucker has made a highly enjoyable album, and even though it isn't entirely original, it is produced beautifully, making it an album that is equally enjoyable while hanging out with friends at the beach or sitting in your bedroom with your headphones on, which is no small feat.



mp3:
Starfucker - German Love

buy:
Starfucker Reptilians