Starfucker Jupiter

(Badman)

[CELESTIAL POP] Since Josh Hodges decided to ditch his bedroom-pop outfit Sexton Blake and hit the dance floor full time, Starfucker has been steadily on the rise. And just six months after the band released its sunny, jubilant self-titled debut, it’s back with a companion mini-EP titled, appropriately, Jupiter. Starfucker isn’t merely reaching for the stars with this one; it’s looking to make it to a whole new planet.

Jupiter feels like Starfucker’s attempt at making it big as an honest-to-goodness electronic act, an odd notion for a band that came from humble beginnings, slaying a few basement parties and grounding itself with a name you can’t say over the airwaves. It’s hard to fault Hodges—along with bandmates Ryan Biornstad and Shawn Glassford and new drummer Keil Corcoran—for looking to the indie zeitgeist (kids just love super-dancey electro-pop), but Jupiter doesn’t quite measure up to the debut because it lacks Starfucker’s greatest strength: real songs.

Though the band’s debut record was laced with a few break-the-pace instrumentals, it also included Starfucker’s best pop moments: the relentless “Florida” and still-infectious “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second.” Nothing on Jupiter quite hits that level, though the opening combo of “Medicine”—with its punchy “take your medicine!” refrain—and live staple “Boy Toy” come closest. Still, too many songs go for groove over melody (see the kinda-annoying “Dance Face 2000”) instead of highlighting the band’s real appeal. Applying sugary, danceable melodies to Hodges’ hushed vocals is fine, but sometimes Starfucker buries its own songwriting in gloss. Jupiter is a good record, but Starfucker is capable of greatness, and we’re still waiting for it.

Tara Jane Oneil A Ways Away

(K Records)

[COMFORTABLE DRONES] Last week I got into a car accident. The details are still a bit shaky; I remember turning left, pulling down my visor to block the sun, and then a sudden impact. I’m fine, but I didn’t leave the scene the same person. And I’d be a total mess without the comforting, meditative sounds of Tara Jane ONeil.

A Ways Away is TJO’s fifth album (and debut for Olympia’s K Records), but it’s the first thing she’s ever recorded that seamlessly blends her minimalist guitar magic with an entire album of full-on songs. A Ways Away is more of a song cycle than an experiment in dissonant textures—tracks like the chiming, repetitive “Drowning” and the meticulously layered “In Tall Grass” feature guitars both finger-picked and laced with reverb, but it’s her voice that’s most revealing. Stark naked and upfront in the mix, TJO has nowhere to hide until the album’s final two songs, where she retreats into a world of chimes and warm guitar drones on closer “The Drowning Electric.” In fact, the last words sung on the record pop up on the blissful kiss-off “A Vertiginous One” when she repeats the phrase, “Give me sun/ In the sound.” There’s nothing else I want to hear on a bad day.

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SEE IT: Starfucker plays Holocene Saturday, May 2 with Deelay Ceelay, Mattress and Joe Avon Appen. 9 pm. $10. All ages. Tara Jane Oneil plays the Fontanelle gallery Thursday, April 30. 8 pm. Free. All ages.