“The bastard scion of two gothic punk-noir bands, each of which formed in '77 and disbanded in '83: The Birthday Party and the Misfits… The Starvations' unreconstructed take on classic L.A. punk is consistently exhilarating.” — Pitchfork
“The Starvations have been able to cinch the dark heart of so many styles of music, to squeeze it, have it languidly bleed down their arms and meander deep under their skin… Closer to what I’ve always thought true roots music should sound like.” — RazorCake
“This is easily one of the best albums of the year. If you're a fan of punk rock when it was fresh and original and real you'll love this.” — PunkNews
“Those who missed out on this crucial group the first time get an opportunity to get straight with these children of The Gun Club.” — Rock and Roll Globe
L.A. band The Starvations (ca. 1995-2005) release the first of their series of reissues from their back catalog today, at a time that's particularly fraught for the band of native Angelenos. Out today is an updated master of their breakthrough 2003 album Get Well Soon originally released via GSL (Mars Volta, The Locust). Hear & share Get Well Soon on all DSPs and Bandcamp.
Songwriter/frontman Gabriel Hart shares his conflicted feelings about releasing the album today while the band's hometown is in crisis:
"While it's been locked in for months now, I was, and remain, conflicted about Get Well Soon being reissued on the weekend of Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires, especially when they’re still raging as I write this, with the displaced still in-between homes with no real resolution in sight to any of it. Our drummer Ian Harrower had to evacuate Tuesday night; the status of his family’s house still unforeseen.
"Even though I left L.A. for the High Desert ten years ago, a huge part of my heart still lives there with members of my family and close friends while the rest of me is out here, feeling separated from my endangered platoon.
"If Get Well Soon is considered an L.A. album, it’s a nightmarish one: full of structures built, only to witness their crumbling and love tempered with devotion, only to watch it waste away. When we finished the album in 2003, I felt it was almost too bleak, which is why I wanted to call it Get Well Soon; if the album contained no hope, maybe its title could? The album’s cover art and lyric sheet was then fashioned into a sort of saccharine, semi-sarcastic greeting card in ironic contrast to the record’s brutal content, in detached and tardy consolation for our countless losses.
Only this time, we really mean it. So here’s to y(our) sacred city and its stronger recovery,
Love, Gabriel Hart."
The Starvations were a rare classic band; their songs sounded like the sum total history of American music condensed into one drunken roadside brawl. The Los Angeles quintet’s musical/historical road is clearly mapped out—blues, rock 'n' roll, country, western and punk—but it has taken a strange, technicolor turn where paranoia and uncertainty strikes with every heartbeat. The band's second album, Get Well Soon released in 2003 on Gold Standard Labs traces the scattered paths from the Gun Club back to Johnny Burnette; early Clash to George Jones; Birthday Party to Delta Blues. The Starvations harnessed the kind of roots rock that London Calling-era The Clash sought but informed with true American, Southern California proto-punk DNA.
Not only did the Starvations have a strong knowledge of musical history—the unassuming yet stunning collective musicianship of bassist Jean-Paul Garnier, guitarist Ryan Hertz, accordionist/pianist Vanessa Gonzalez and drummer Ian Harrower, paired with the immense songwriting talents of vocalist/guitarist Gabriel Hart imbues its songs with a sense of timeless, wanton urgency. Likewise, the Starvations’ songs sound simultaneously rural antique and decrepitly urban punk-romantic.
Most of the band members met as teens growing up in Orange County, CA, often picked up from junior high by elder delinquents driving a converted hearse for after school misadventures, inevitably arriving at the wreckage of the American Dream—to a house akin the fabled punk rock squat that inspired “Kids of the Black Hole” by the Adolescents and “Playpen” by Social Distortion (and, in turn, the Penelope Spheeris’ cult classic Suburbia.) This ground-zero crash pad would later inspire Hart’s 2024 punk-noir novel On High at Red Tide.
Just a few short years later, having cut its teeth playing the filthy Hollywood bar scene, releasing its debut album A Blackout to Remember in 1999 and an EP, One Long Night in 2001, The Starvations became a full-grown, world-worn band while still barely into their 20’s.
The Starvations’ second GSL album, Gravity’s a Bitch was released in 2004. The depth of its dark spirit and embracing of life’s many complications showed exponential growth in Hart’s songwriting and served as a fitting teaser for his dark, punk take on 60s girl group fare with the sprawling 10-piece lineup of Jail Weddings.
Get Well Soon is reissued on streaming and download on January 10th, 2025 via Permanent Teeth Records. Orders are available HERE.
Artist: The Starvations
Album: Get Well Soon
Label: Permanent Teeth Records
Release Date: January 10, 2025
01. This is What You Wanted
02. Pray For Foul Play
03. Hide and Go Seek
04. Red Wine
05. An American Funeral
06. Rebel Angel
07. Recipe For a Mess
08. Oh Deputy!
09. Upon Your Request
10. Not Me This Time
11. Post-Climax Exhaustion
On The Web:
thestarvations.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/thestarvations
permanentteethrecords.bandcamp.com
