While this video casts them as something of a mere "rock band", any opportunity to be dazzled by these guys is worth a few minutes of your time. The song "Spirit Army" is from the Starlite Desperation's Take it Personally LP, which I'd call one of the best releases of 2008 that somehow slipped totally under the wire of cultural recognition. The band's early records paired up such disparate influences (Television? Devo? The Gun Club! Creedence!) and were so far distanced from other mid-late 90s sounds, I couldn't help but imagine them to be progenitors of a collective leap into newly realized artistic waters. It was my solemn prayer that the Starlite Desperation's glammy postulations on sex and death would blaze a trail that others would follow, but sadly, they wound up toiling in obscurity while lesser bands earned praise for their faux bad-boy simpering and meticulously tossed hair.
In April of 2000, I followed the band's tour for three brilliant performances at Philadelphia's Khyber Pass, Hoboken's Maxwell's, and then a hastily planned in-store at NYC's (now-shuttered) Sound & Fury Records. Four years later, I managed to dance even closer to the magic when they performed on my radio program. Here's an MP3 from that blazin' live session, and here's a link to buy the Starlite Desperation's records from Insound. In addition to the album this song comes from, the debut (Show You What a Baby Won't) and its followups (Go Kill Mice + Violate a Sundae) all pack an intensity and firepower that I've yet to see matched.
Wow! That's a great song. I'll check out the album...
Posted by: Tim Kastelle | August 01, 2009 at 05:40 PM