Starcrawler — not so much crawling as assaulting you in the face!
This rock/punk/grunge band are always connected in the press with Los Angeles, and it is easy to imagine that their particular brand of chaos belongs exclusively to the LA scene. But even though I am sitting here in the UK, I can hear them perfectly well. In fact, I suspect Starcrawler would be rather disappointed if their music didn’t make you feel as though someone had just kicked open the door.
If you were around the LA music scene, you may already have been aware of this particular team, partly because of the notorious on-stage persona of lead singer Arrow de Wilde. There is nothing remotely conventional about watching de Wilde perform. She has been known to launch herself into the crowd covered in blood and throw various objects into the audience. It is all, apparently, in the name of rock ‘n’ roll — and Starcrawler have certainly never appeared particularly interested in doing things quietly.
But this is absolutely not a one-woman show.
Guitarist Henri Cash, who attended LA Grand Arts High School with de Wilde, has been with the band since its outset in 2015. His recruitment is almost as Starcrawler as the band itself: he was spotted walking around with a tuba. Quite why that was the deciding factor is unclear, but somehow it makes perfect sense.
On bass is Tim Franco, while the drum stool was originally occupied by Austin Smith, who is credited with coming up with the Starcrawler name. Smith was there from the beginning but left the band in October 2020, citing the need for more family time.
Post-2020, new drummer Seth Carolina can be heard on the drums for the first time by fans on the single ‘Goodtime Girl’. The track also found its way onto the soundtrack for the DC Comics event Dark Nights: Death Metal, which seems an entirely appropriate home for it.
Goodtime Girl is an interesting track: menacing, swaggering and just a little bit unhinged. It would have fitted rather neatly alongside the material on 2019’s Devour You, an album which received a very positive critical response.
For this writer, the standout tracks from Devour You were ‘Hollywood Ending’ and ‘She Gets Around’. There is something wonderfully grubby about the guitar sound here, coupled with lyrics that seem to inhabit a slightly darker corner of the Hollywood dream. At times, the guitars recall Nirvana, while elsewhere there is a distinctly punkier edge reminiscent of the more ferocious moments of The Runaways. It is music that feels less polished than it does dangerous — and I mean that as a compliment.
There is also a theatrical quality to Starcrawler which makes the whole thing feel bigger than simply putting four musicians in a room and asking them to play some songs. De Wilde’s performance persona is certainly part of that, but the music has enough muscle behind it to stand without the blood, bruises and flying mobile phones. Beneath the spectacle is a band that understands exactly what it wants its guitars to sound like.
The enforced time off the road caused by Covid naturally interrupted that momentum. De Wilde spent some of the period working as a voice actor for DC Comics and also did some work as a DJ, while the band had time to consider where they wanted to go next.
There were already heavy rumours of a new album in the pipeline, potentially stretching the sound beyond Goodtime Girl. With a return to the live stage also on the cards, there was plenty to look forward to.
And then there is the collecting side of things.
Vinyl collectors could do considerably worse than keeping an eye out for Starcrawler’s 2017 debut 7″, ‘Ants’, particularly the red-and-white splatter vinyl version with picture sleeve. If you happen to encounter one at a record fair, don’t casually wander away and assume there will be another one next week. Only 500 were produced, making it a much-watched item among collectors.
Of course, behind the theatrics and the rock ‘n’ roll mayhem, there is also a much more unpleasant story.
In August 2020, de Wilde spoke publicly about an incident during Starcrawler’s Australian tour with The Growlers in which she said she was sexually assaulted by a male stripper arranged by the band. Her account was corroborated by Starcrawler guitarist Henri Cash, while Growlers frontman Brooks Nielsen subsequently acknowledged arranging the stripper and apologised for what he described as a “horrible idea” that went badly wrong.
Whatever one thinks about the deliberately outrageous world of stage performance, an assault is an assault, and what was alleged to have happened to de Wilde was deeply disturbing. It is entirely to her credit that she picked herself up afterwards and continued working, creating and performing.
That resilience perhaps tells us something about Starcrawler as a whole. This is a band whose public image is built around chaos, noise, blood and theatrical excess, but underneath it there is a determination to keep moving forward.
So, good luck to Starcrawler.
Turn the amplifiers up, find Devour You, give Goodtime Girl a spin and, if you are lucky enough to catch them live, keep one hand firmly on your mobile phone.
Let’s get back to listening to them in 2022.
Artist website here
By Benny (the Ball) Benson
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