With the release of last year’s critically applauded, self-titled debut, the Los Angeles-based indie rock act Starcrawler — Arrow de Wilde (vocals), Henri Cash (guitar), Austin Smith (drums) and Tim Franco (bass) — quickly emerged into both national and international scene for a grunge rock inspired sound and a feral live show. And since the release of their debut album, Starcrawler has had a busy touring schedule that has seen them play at some of the world’s major music festivals including Primavera Sound, Rock Am Ring, Download Festival, Voodoo Festival, FujiRock Festival, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival, SXSW and others.
Adding to a rising profile, the band was included as part of last year’s incredibly diverse crop of Vevo DSCVR — but they were only ones to have Garbage’s Shirley Manson praise the band and de Wilde in a video testimonial. They’ve also opened for Foo Fighters, MC50 Morrissey, Beck, Cage The Elephant, Spoon and The Distillers. But this year may be a breakthrough one for the Los Angeles-based indie rock act. “Hollywood Ending,” the first single from the band this year received praise from NPR and Rolling Stone, and as a result, the track spent several weeks at #1 on speciality radio charts. And more importantly, the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Devour You is slated for an October 11, 2019 release through Rough Trade Records.
Produced by Nick Launay at Sunset Studios, the album finds the band capturing the aggression and essence of their unhinged live show and pairing it with a more elaborate, more nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette to create a sound that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says ““encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.” Devour You’s first single is the swinging, glam rock-inspired “Bet My Brains.” And while bearing a dim resemblance to the boogie shake of T. Rex, the song is centered by de Wilde’s feral vocals. a massive guitar riff and a cretinous and forceful stomp. “That song came from thinking about the tunnel people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” says de Wilde. “I was fascinated with the fact that there is a whole other world happening right under our feet.” Guitarist and vocalist Henri Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”
Directed by Jellycraw, the recently released video features de Wilde giving an absolutely manic, Heath Ledger-like performance, reminiscent of her stage antics — all while seeing the video’s other characters get murdered in a variety of ways.
