Starcrawler

Devour You

The triumphant second album from the Hollywood brats.

We don’t want to freak them out or anything, but the future of rock’n’roll rests, literally, on the very recently teenage shoulders of Starcrawler. Forget all this blouse-abusing retro-dad rock Greta Van Fleet stuff, nobody in the dull-as-toast “new wave of classic rock” camp is gonna inspire an army of hip young things to drop out, dress cool, sling pawnshop guitars and spit in the faces of the bourgeoisie like our famed and fabled rock heroes from days long past did. But Starcrawler can.

Like most things in this confusing mess of a world this motley crew of ragged LA insider glam-rock wastrels didn’t exactly crawl out of the gutter like their early 80s counterparts. Infamously slinky frontwoman Arrow DeWilde has semifamous parents (rock photog mom, indiedrummer dad) and not only did they bother to finish high school before chasing worldwide notoriety, but DeWilde even took her affable tuba player-turnedguitarist Henri Cash to the prom with her. So they aren’t quite as dangerous as the drug-depraved nihilists they sometimes resemble (hello GN’R, Dead Boys, New York Dolls), but on a good day they sound just as thrillingly reckless, and that’s the kind of rush worth chasing.

Their out-of-nowhere 2018 self-titled debut was a hedonistic blast of nasty, punky glitter rock littered with weirdo sex’n’oblivion epics like Pussy Tower and Chicken Woman, and the equally excitable Devour You continues to spew up deliciously hot glam-trash. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, L7), who layers the album with crashing waves of noise, the band’s second outing shows some glimmers of maturity - lead-off single Hollywood Ending is a cinematic swirl of beachgaze-y post-punk miles away from their usual basement-brat attack, and Born Asleep is like a gloomy Americana-tinged 90s alt.rock ballad – but for the most part it’s all claws, teeth, smeared lipstick and snarls, exactly as you’d hope it would be. Opener Lizzy has a kind of desperate, Daisy Chainsaw-esque dissonance laced with acid-spitting early 70s proto-punk guitar wailings, Bet My Brains is a fireball of teenage outrage, like Marilyn Manson if he’d never lost the plot, and Toy Teenager is gnashing speed-grunge with a chewy pop centre.

Obviously Starcrawler sift through the decades snatching inspiration from just about everywhere, but luckily, they have impeccable taste. If you’re gonna rip anybody off, it might as well be The Stooges and PJ Harvey. A full-on rager, this one. Devour You knows what’s up. ■■■■■■■■■■ sleazegrinder