Starfucker
Jupiter

The debut album of Starfucker, now fully integrated among my musical "favorites," is a classic record that is still too immature to allow for definitive evaluations. It's a work that already shows a great sense of melody and the large style and somewhat eccentric and indefinable personality that will characterize the group in the following years. However, "Starfucker" from 2008 does not yet have a well-defined identity, at times appearing slightly confused and random, balancing between new wave and psychedelia with solutions that will be reworked with more maturity and effectiveness in the latest album "Miracle Mile." Nevertheless, less than a year since its release, the group led by Joshua Hodges comes out with an EP; indeed, a mini-album composed of five previously unreleased tracks, a brief instrumental piece, a cover, and a remix. You might think it's a simple operation to slightly increase profits while waiting for a second album, but "Jupiter" turns out to be a delightful surprise.

If "Reptilians" finds its strength in alien and twilight atmospheres and "Miracle Mile" in a multicolored whirl of 60's psychedelia and 80's new wave readapted for the 10's, in turn, the younger sibling "Jupiter" has its winning card in groove and immediacy. In this EP, STRFKR showcases their most danceable and energetic side. The fantastic one-two punch at the beginning marked by "Medicine" and "Boy Toy", songs that for strength and immediacy are second only to "Julius" in Starfucker's repertoire, perfectly represent my archetype of a pop-dance song: lively, bright, ironic, and flirtatious in a way that feels entirely natural, spontaneous; exactly like the evergreen "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, which they honor with a simple and straightforward cover, faithful to the original and therefore very pleasing. The '80s are a fixation for Joshua Hodges and his cohorts, more so in this EP than in their other releases, with new wave being a guiding star referenced in episodes like "Dance Face 2000" and "Bed-Stuy (Super Cop)" with their hypnotic beats combined with filtered and effected vocals, a recurring trademark for the Portland band. "Biggie Smalls", on the other hand, continues in the vein of "Pop Song" from the debut album, offering a lively and immediate electronic power-pop, closing in grand style with "Jupiter," an instrumental title track that turns out to be a small window into the future of the band, foreshadowing with its pleasantly disorienting groove the shift and definitive leap in quality of "Reptilians."

"Jupiter" is thus an extended play that matters, completely comparable to a full-fledged album in terms of importance for the band and its artistic path. Joshua Hodges displays his great talents as a histrionic and talented pop songwriter by developing his personal mix of electronic, dance, new wave, and psychedelia in a more defined form compared to the debut, and after all, it has been amply demonstrated that it is not the number of songs or, even worse, the length that makes an album great, but the ideas and sounds contained within it, and "Jupiter" is a beautiful concentrate of freshness and vitality, with the mind in the past and the heart reaching forward. This EP is the actual starting point of a career still young, and I hope it can continue with further maturity and conviction on these tracks because the future of the finest qualities of Pop music lies entirely in the inspiration of new talents like STRFKR.