The Rickshaw Stop used to host an 18+ dance party called “Blow Up” every Friday night. I went a few times in high school, and by the last time I felt dirty for going — the crowd was an awful mixture of 15 year olds with fake IDs, wannabe American Apparel models, creepy mid-twenties guys who had come to grind on the 15 year olds, and an endless sea of amateur “party photographers” firing flashes onto the whole sweaty mess. The Rickshaw Stop had to shut it down last year — more than 500 people were showing up to cram into a 200-capacity venue.
It seemed about half the crowd at this show consisted of people who hadn’t gotten the memo that “Blow Up” wasn’t happening anymore, and Butterfly Bones sounded like they could have been played at Blow Up. Their music is catchy and danceable, but after half an hour of the same predictable breaks we heard all over MSTRKRFT remixes in 2006, I got the queasy feeling that I was back in high school, trying to dodge drunk guys’ attempts to grope me. To BB’s credit, electro-pop is pretty hard to get right, but their version didn’t bring any new ideas.
Starfucker (who, thankfully, are back to that name and not Pyramiddd), however, do have great ideas regarding electro-pop. They use guitars and synths equally and for interesting effects, and their songs sound like songs rather than an endless, unchanging pulse. They also know to take a break, and some of the best parts of the night were mid-tempo tracks from their newer material. They still wear dresses when they perform and they still got the room dancing so hard that sweat dripped off the ceiling, but they back up the antics and the beats with solid pop music. Electronics augment, but don’t define, Starfucker’s music, which is an important nuance to notice when you can still dance to something. I hope the “Blow Up” transplants appreciated it, too.
