Review
Star Fucking Hipsters
Until We're Dead

Fat Wreck Chords (2008) Loren

Star Fucking Hipsters – Until We're Dead cover artwork
Star Fucking Hipsters – Until We're Dead — Fat Wreck Chords, 2008

Let's face it: a lot of punk rock comes across through the singer's voice, and that voice often isn't pretty: Johnny Rotten's snottiness, Tim Armstrong's slurs, Jello Biafra's warble. When it comes to the Star Fucking Hipsters' Sturgeon (Choking Victim, Leftover Crack), his voice is easily identifiable and his work brings associations of shock appeal and overhanded lefty politics. Star Fucking Hipsters take the gutter-ska approach of his other bands and mix it with a dose of pop-punk. What you get in the end isn't the prettiest concoction, but is that what it's really about? The concept behind the band started with Sturgeon and deceased Leftover Crack drummer Brandon Cevalier-Kolling. In short, the Star Fucking Hipsters is a male/female dual vocal band consisting of a rotating cast of NYC area punks.

The multiple singer style of Star Fucking Hipsters really seems to highlight just how bad his singing really is. Whenever the tempo is slowed, as in "Empty Lives," he sounds like he was just pulled out of bed after three hours of sleep and a bottle of cheap whiskey - his voice is sluggish, harsh, and reluctant. In the faster tempo songs, such as the Third Wave ska-punk of "Snitch to the Suture," his voice is far more adequate for the style. But Sturgeon only makes up half of the vocals. The real standouts are when Nico De Gaillo sings, such as on "Immigrants & Hypocrites" - the album's best track - fast tempo punk with a tongue-twisting delivery and the one of the few choruses on the record that sticks with you.

Of course, while stomaching Sturgeon's vocals, there's also the matter of the lyrics. The forward and incendiary political nature is nothing new: cops are bad, don't trust the government, etc. However, in "9/11 Was (an Inside Job)," the adolescent simplicity of the rhymes is ridiculous: "The towers falling down / Gave the U.S.A. a frown

Giuliani fixed the job / Abetted by the mob

" About the only positive to come out of this song is a fun illustration of W playing with some airplanes in the liner notes.

In the aforementioned "9/11 Was," the music is simple pop-punk with a repetitive verse, chorus, verse. You know how most NOFX albums have 3-4 standout songs and then you skip the rest of the album? This song sounds exactly like that skipable 75%. It's unimaginative and has the lyrical insight of early Anti-Flag minus the big words. On "The Path is Paved," they follow a similar approach, but with a screaming, chant-like vocal delivery over the Cali-style guitars. As this release appears on Fat Wreck, it's curious that they adopt the quasi-NOFX sound that defined the label through the 1990s. "Zombie Christ" and the other ska songs also remind me of Choking Victim.

It's decent stuff, but I would lump it in with other Epitaph and Fat Wreck punk that is readily available and often interchangeable. When I was seventeen I would have found this a lot more enjoyable than I do now. The fact that the ska-punk songs are among the most memorable is definitely not a positive in my mind.

5.7 / 10Loren • December 21, 2008

Star Fucking Hipsters – Until We're Dead cover artwork
Star Fucking Hipsters – Until We're Dead — Fat Wreck Chords, 2008

Related news

Star Fucking Hipsters Announce New Album

Posted in Records on August 5, 2011

Star Fucking Hipsters Prep New Album / Post Song

Posted in Records on October 2, 2009

Recently-posted album reviews

Personality Cult

Dilated
Dirtnap (2025)

I had a hard time starting this review. I can’t help coming back to the fact that it sounds like Marked Men. It does, maybe intentionally so, as Dilated is the second of Personality Cult’s albums that is produced by Jeff Burke of Marked Men and Radioactivity. But I don’t necessarily like to say a band sounds like another band … Read more

Various Artists

Her Head's On Fire/Arms Like Roses - Split
Double Helix (2025)

Her Head’s On Fire (NY, NY) and Arms Like Roses (New Haven, CT) team up on this split 7” with two new tracks (one each band) of post-hardcore tunes that are both massive and melodic in their own distinct ways. "Universal" is the track from Her Head’s On Fire. Recorded by the band’s guitarist Jeff Dean, "Universal" came from the … Read more

Dead Bars

All Dead Bars Go To Heaven
Iodine (2025)

Dead Bars has a unique talent of taking the everyday, the experiences you see and live all the time, and shining a new light on them to make them personal and interesting. I've written about it before, yet it's my job to say this again and to make it interesting. It's what Dead Bars does, so it only seems fitting … Read more