Starfucker
Miracle Mile

"Dance music that you can actually listen to, that's good pop songs, but also you can dance to it". Joshua Hodges, the mastermind behind the Starfucker project, or STRFKR to friends, describes the musical style of his creation in this way, but, upon reaching the third chapter, something changes: the electronic element remains the pivot around which the work revolves, but it is really very, very difficult to dance to the notes of "Miracle Mile". This is an album made more for relaxing, resting, contemplating, dreaming. Ethereal melodies, mind you, not lullabies, that gracefully and naturally insinuate themselves into the listener's mind, an album that breaks away from "Reptilians", like two paintings using the same palette of colors but with entirely different painting styles.

"Miracle Mile" shares with its predecessor a cover that is already in itself a joy for the eyes, and the soft pink hues are not at all accidental: compared to a record with strong hues and slightly unsettling alien atmospheres like "Reptilians", MM is more sweet, continuous, round. It is certainly not the record that can ensure great success for these talented Oregonians, because, first and foremost, it completely lacks a single with strong impact, and not only that, "Miracle Mile" gives very little importance to the songs taken individually; it is a fluid, smooth, cohesive discourse. This peculiarity evokes in me an instinctive comparison with "A Gift From A Flower To A Garden" by Donovan; is it my problem if I perceive Donovan's influence in many recent alternative pop releases that I like? Perhaps so, but I don't think it's just a coincidence. The fact is, like that 1968 double album, "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" to be even more specific, "Miracle Mile" is a collection of small and colorful pop alchemies, which if isolated from their context appear almost like simple nursery rhymes without intrinsic depth, pieces of a mosaic that, when harmoniously placed, form a beautiful landscape. Everything revolves around the seductive, slightly filtered and vocoderized voice of Joshua Hodges and the fascinating combinations of electronics, bass, and some acoustic guitar: will-o'-the-wisps, not whirlwinds like in "Reptilians"; the music is sometimes slightly coquettish and spicy as in "While I'm Alive" or "Malmo", with piano, bass, and a bit of funky, in other instances more tranquil and relaxed, slightly hypnotic: "Kahlil Gibran", "Beach Monster" and "I Don't Want To See" above all. Neither style, however, manages to clearly prevail over the other; they often blend and interpenetrate.

So this time no star-lit vaults and alien presences, "Miracle Mile" rather evokes fairy-tale, evening but not nighttime scenarios, a walk in an enchanted forest, populated by small and bizarre, winking creatures. No, no drugs, it's an image that just came to me naturally, just by listening to the music. Well, anyway, "Miracle Mile" confirms STRFKR as one of the brightest realities of today's pop. From Portland, with love.