A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Fantasy > Reality LP by MOVIESTARZ. Over the last fifteen years, those working within the punk genre have gone to great lengths to try and reinvent it – but everyone has always come up a little short on achieving something which has felt brand new and exciting. When VICE Records made the leap and attempted to reinvent hardcore with OFF! on their First Four EPs release, the results were fine and reignited interest in both hardcore and small labels similar to what Epitaph achieved, about twenty years before, but the interest proved to only have a fraction of the lasting appeal, and had burned itself out within the five years which followed (excluding the preposterous amount of time that it took the band to complete their Free LSD movie/vanity project). The same problem held true for both Rise Against and Against Me! before OFF!, and for plenty of other bands before them too.
Why has no one managed to meaningfully update punk in a satisfying manner? Part of that has to do with the constraints apparent in the music due to form. At its core, punk is all about rebellion, and one of the requirements to articulate that is to wilfully reject all of that which has come before – but removing that keystone means that you’re just following the same pattern that everyone else has. The result looks an awful lot like an Ouroboros, unfortunately; by attempting to rebel against the norm after the first time it happens, it just becomes another path that any creative entity can do, and so the snake can eat its own tail with a different soundtrack. What makes MOVIESTARZ different from those who have come before is that, unlike artists including Billy Idol, Fischerspooner and Le Tigre who all included elements of electronic music as a convenient seasoning to make what they were doing “a little different,” MOVIESTARZ make that which used to be a novelty included only to get some attention as essential to the music’s form as the punk aspect of it – it’s not just a novelty, it’s the thing that genuinely realizes a unique and completely different kind of music.
The sense of novelty – and the sense of excitement which comes with it – explodes out of Fantasy > Reality as soon as needle catches groove and “Club Punk” opens the album. There, after an anonymous child declares, “I wanna be a movie star,” a gloriously crunchy and phase-effected guitar helps the song spiral to centre stage and then it just takes off, running. Twosome Tyler Nichols (vocals, keyboards) and Alex Pombar (guitar, bass, production) break landspeed records with a surprisingly thick [that only one vocalist is listed in the album’s liner notes of the album came as a complete shock to this critic –ed] and unrelenting, but also very dextrous sound which wins listeners effortlessly. Lyrics ranging from pop orthodoxy (see “Did you dream about being who you are?/ Or watching the clock to be a superstar”) to surprisingly spry inversions of that orthodoxy (check out, “Foreign car, crashed out/ Seeing stars before I get knocked out”) illustrate a “something for everyone approach to songwriting, but that it’s all encased in a candy-pop shell is the thing that ensures satisfaction and repeat listens.
After “Club Punk” get listeners locked in, the megalithic size of the rhythm figure which opens and then powers “Invited” serves as a perfect response to what was started with the previous cut. There, the chunky but nimble guitars and synths sound super-slick and compliment the very digital inflected tone of the vocal, but the cut never lags or drags its’ feet at all; “Invited” manages to reconcile the pop punk overtones of both the lyrics and the vocal tone (imagine feeding a Blink 182 vocal through a harmonizer, and you’re close to how “Invited” sounds) with the song’s inherent electronic structure, and the results echo “Club Punk” without seeming as though MOVIESTARZ just wrote the same song twice. The balance that the band strikes is precarious, but the group proves that the novel nature of the music they’re making doesn’t get stale after listeners have reached a sense of familiarity with it.
As the side progresses, “On Mute” pushes the sound that MOVIESTARZ has established closer to both pop and electroclash before pulling the conglomerate back to Nineties pop punk while upping the electronic tone too for “Records On Repeat,” but the wit of the song (particularly the “skip” at the end, which is the great gag that might get some less-than-intelligent listeners to curse and return the album, regardless of whether they bought a CD or a record) coupled with the danceable electronics will hold listeners dearly engaged. Anyone who thought that Bender was the best part of Futurama will find themselves grinning from ear-to-ear at the humor in this album.
As solid and satisfying as the A-side of the Fantasy > Reality LP is, the B-side brgins on a different tack entirely but still upholds the vibe that the A-side established. As needle catches groove, “The Rush” defies expectation and enters with a much milder movement as the beats and bass come closer to sounding like blanket dance material at any “gentleman’s club,” which sort of works but lines like, “Check-in, checked out/ In a rush, full of doubt/ Where’s the spouse, where’s the ring, where’s the house does it ever work out” sit at odds with the impression that the music makes – which is confusing and won’t leave listeners sorry when the song goes. Happily though, the side is able to bound back when “Listening” returns to the pop-punk/electronica combination that the album began with and remains there for “Chaos In The Magic.”
It is important to point out that, when the album reaches “Chaos In The Magic” in its running, the song represents an achievement in that it successfully balances a much milder tempo with the electronic base and gets over brilliantly – where the form previously faltered. Here, lines like, “I’ll go up down, Turnaround/ Slap your face, And punch the ground/Put your hands up to the sky,Party rockin’ tonight” come off as anthemic – not derivative – and listeners will not at all feel inclined to wriggle off the hook. In this case, “Chaos In The Magic” is not derivative, it’s ambrosia – and even the stodgiest critics will feel their hearts melt for it. They’ll still be reeling from that hit as “Tear This Apart” begins to open, and the aquatic, almost “Born Slippy”-sounding style about it causes those listening to shift gears with the song effortlessly – and then follow it back up to speed again as it moves. There is an almost hypnotic quality as lines like, “I hate when you’re not sitting here/ I love it when you are/ The room’s lit up by candlelight/ It’s beautiful and dark/ I love when you’re not sitting here/ I hate it when you are/And now she wants her revenge/And I’ll tear this apart” which cause listeners to accept what the band is saying completely at face value, and has a marvellous, suggestive quality which proves to hold strongly through the far more glitchy and generally contradictory sentiments of “Wonderful Horrible” (the song that follows it) too.
After the album’s running to that point, listeners may find themselves more than a little drained by the experience – but MOVIESTARZ still has one cut left and, when “EIAEID” (MOVIESTARZ’s guest spot with Darrian Gerard) listeners will find their dispositions spontaneously brightening again too. There, without much other than the powers they present throughout the album, MOVIESTARZ bid listeners farewell warmly (lines like, “Nothing and everything/ Stays the same/ Put it on replay/ What should i say/ Scenes are changing/ All at once/ Trade it for nothing/ I still had fun” about sum it up and say it all – literally, that’s the song’s entire lyric sheet) and give listeners just one last three-minute farewell before the stylus lifts. It’s a perfectly satisfying end – and a surprising one for an untested group; here, MOVIESTARZ express restraint and give listeners what they need to make their introduction. The band gives listeners just enough – which leaves them wanting more, after they’ve heard it. [Bill Adams]
Artist:
https://www.moviestarzzzz.com/
https://www.instagram.com/moviestarzzzz/?hl=en
Album:
MOVIESTARZ’s Fantasy > Reality LP is out now. Buy it here, at the band’s official store.
