thoughts on the new Star Fucking Hipsters album (finally!)

It's growing on me. I am quite fond of the first album, "Until We're Dead," (appropriately misspelled as "Until Were Dead" in my fuckyouTunes-- I will fix that), and so on the first listen of their sophomore album, my misgivings centered around how it didn't sound any different. The typical "eh" reaction.

But why be upset that I'm getting more of the same kind of goodness? I asked the same question with the new Green Day album, which while schmaltzier was pretty much the same as American Idiot-- whether it's ok for a band to not develop at all, to not fix what wasn't broke. What happened when Green Day decided to fix what wasn't broke-- we got American Idiot. Not my favorite, but not a bad album. Good, even. (I hate to bring in the Green Day example because I am liking SFH much more than the new Green Day stuff, as you can imagine.) On the other hand, I have trouble differentiating most of the songs between the two SFH albums, though that might be a function of listening to both very short albums all the way through all at once usually. The kind of patchwork/ransom note quality of blending genres and leitmotifs and vocal duties also adds to this melange quality that expands over both albums, and I like it.

So "Never Rest in Peace" is pretty much the same thing as the first album. The same sentiments, the same idea, the same songs. And I really really like it. They're like twins-- arguably aesthetically the same (musically-- auditory aesthetics), but each with their own appeal-- It's another catchy, fast, aggressive, melodic set of tracks, and I guess after I thought about it, I wasn't asking for much more. The really catchy tunes stand out, and the "filler" (not a fair label, maybe, but--) is good, too.

Dick from Citizen Fish & Subhumans again appears on several tracks, most notably on "The Civilization Show," which is pretty clearly a Citizen Fish track backed by SFH-- as does Miguel, who is a very lovely person and an outstanding musician who probably gave us bedbugs (as did every other person who visited us this summer-- I'm blaming them all, and myself.) He's the nice trombone solo on that track.

That said, I think the new Rancid is growing on me, too, and I'm actually moving away from the acoustic tracks and now listen more often to the faster, more classic Rancid tracks. What's going on? Again, I think once you become acclimated to an album, you stop worrying about intellectually deciding anything about a track as you come to recognize & memorize certain tracks by the merit of their crafted (crafty!) catchiness.

So I guess I give the album 5/5 for doing what I expect it to. If they are not trying to do anything new, than I don't see the point of holding them to some vague and grand telos of music that I couldn't possibly understand, anyway.

So my favorite tracks, I think, are "Severance Pay" and "Heaven" (with the Degenerics)-- I love what they do with the sudden introduction of a pure female voice, really cuts into the music in the contrast. Check out their Myspace. Buy the album from Alternative Tentacles. Read the well-informed & informative Punk News review.