Interview with Starcrazy: ‘We’ve got some new songs that are thrash metal and power pop!’

Sydney-based retro rockers Starcrazy released their glam rock, infectiously good EP  ‘Another Day, Another Squalor…’ in March and will shortly release their next single, a cover of ‘S.O.S’ by ABBA.

They comprise Marcus Fraser (vocals), Odin Wolf (guitar), Jack Barratt (bass/vocals) and Jack Farmer (drums). Wolf and Fraser have been friends since they were 10: ‘I put out an ad for an AC/DC cover band when I was 10 years old and Marcus was one of the first people who answered it,’ Wolf said. Fraser nods: ‘I’ve always played drums like my dad. I started singing for a bit but by the end of high school, it had dissipated. I started again three years ago.’ Their name came out of COVID: ‘I was thinking “stircrazy” and the thought “starcrazy” came to mind,’ Fraser said. ‘I always wanted to be in a band with “star” in it, it’s funny that it was unwavering!’

Mashing up glam rock and power pop with 80’s alternative metal and funk, they’re a band very much bringing back guitar rock: ‘This EP has a more refined sound, it’s more collaborative,’ Wolf said. Fraser agrees: ‘It’s Van Halen meets Jane’s Addiction (laughs), we’re trying to mix in the darker side of the Californian scene.’

‘Another Day, Another Squalor…’ is a vintage-inspired release bursting with life, powered along by fantastic vocals from Fraser and grin-inducing, hooky as hell riffs from Wolf. The hardships and joys of existence are all explored across the EP in a collection of tracks ranging from the gritty and heavy to party anthems that deserve to be played as loud as possible. The album juxtaposes their daily realities and desire for escapism, inspired by the well-known saying ‘another day, another dollar’ tweaked to reflect high rent prices for below-par living conditions: ‘Me and Odie work for the council doing groundwork,’ Fraser said. ‘It’s a bit cringey the price of housing and the state of rentals here. The quality of where you’re staying is pretty dismal, it’s a reference to that. The EP is not conceptual, we had another two or three songs that we scrapped. I love the process of thinking about the tracklisting order. It fell together quite well. The last song  – ‘Monday Morning (Prayer For Tony)’ – has a moody bit towards the end.’

‘That big chorus is positivity through adversity’

The opener ‘Galaxy O’Luv’ is one of my most played songs of the year, erupting with tantalisingly catchy riffs and tons of swagger set against dynamic rock arrangements which build to a killer guitar solo from Wolf around two minutes in. It’s glam rock at its very best, as he races up and down the fretboard at scintillating speed. There’s an energy and sense of fun to the track that pulls you in. It’s a song about trying to focus on the positives in life, with lyrics encouraging you to get out there and enjoy it.

As the track kicks off: “Giving it all you’ve got now. But you have got to give it more. Breaking your back for a living. Shocks your system to the core. Oh, just take a look outside, look into the sky. Can you feel it, ooooooh? Sent from the universe, a little message from above. Straight from the galaxy of love.” The party spirit extends into the next part of the song with the lines: “Everyone’s got tight pants on. Everyone’s feeling just alright. We’re gonna break out, baby. We’re gonna do it up tonight.”  

The melody turns out to have been written by their bass player, with the lyrics written by Fraser: ‘Our bass player has a great ear, it’s got a galloping groove, it suited our EP,’ Wolf said enthusiastically. Fraser nods: ‘At our last gig, we finished with it, it was bombastic! It was my idea of looking to a certain source of power that can help you out of a situation,’ he said. ‘Looking at the sky at night time, being inspired by it. That big chorus is positivity through adversity. We normally start or finish with it, it just has the glam rock vibes.’ Wolf laughs: ‘Yeah, it has that Van Halen shuffle!’

‘When I met Odie, we both bonded over our love for AC/DC’

They both had very early introductions to music: ‘When I was three, I found my parents’ KISS records,’ Wolf recounted. ‘I would pick up my dad’s guitar and rock out in front of the TV watching all their KISS video tapes (laughs), so they eventually bought me my own half-size guitar to start taking lessons on. I grew up listening to a lot of glam rock, metal and punk’.  Fraser came to music a slightly different way: ‘There’s an LA band called Faster Pussycat, my mum had their album, it really grabbed me. I was into Bowie. When I met Odie, we both bonded over our love for AC/DC. They were such an integral band to us in Australia. If you meet someone who doesn’t like them, you don’t trust them (laughs).’

In another track, ‘The Big Time’, their vocal harmonies weave around the heavier instrumentation, producing a contrapuntal effect and they sound as if they’re having the time of their life, with “ooh ooh’s” scattered throughout: ‘That’s one I wrote,’ said Wolf. ‘I came up with that bass line sitting in my bedroom playing it over and over again and then added a fun, bouncy guitar riff to go with it. The chorus has a great melodic guitar line over the top. Towards the end of the song, we layered up a number of guitar and vocal melodies as it fades out.’ Fraser agrees: ‘We had four separate guitar lines at the end. The “ooh ooh’s” I nicked from ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. People in the crowd can’t help but sing along because it has a good hook! The falsetto stuff is always fun! There was a third verse but out of laziness, I said: “I’m just gonna sing “la la la’s” instead!” (laughs), Bowie did that on ‘Time’ (Aladdin Sane). JB adds a harmony on it, it’s one of my faves.’

As it kicks off: “Here we are in the same old jam going nowhere. Daytime TV has got me losing my hair. I gotta get myself together now. I gotta bet my money, put it down. I gotta get my name all over town.”

Fraser’s drumming days continue to have an impact on how he writes songs today: ‘I was a drummer most of my life,’ he said. ‘I have a knack for phrasing. Sometimes, with lyrics, it can be something beautiful that comes together easily, but you always want to redefine it. In Starcrazy, Jack drums, so I recently sold my drum kit. My girlfriend was on the phone to her mum, who thought she made me sell it (laughs). She didn’t, it was just taking up space in the wardrobe and I just needed some money. I still occasionally play drums in another band, Buffalo Revisited, they’re a bit Sabbath!’

They’ve been to some incredible gigs over the years: ‘Seeing Van Halen supported by Kool & The Gang at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas back in 2012 a few rows from the front was a pretty mind blowing experience,’ Wolf said. ‘On a local level, we played a show with our buddies Well? at an old jail in Newcastle. Their guitarist Taylan played a one handed guitar solo while hanging from the bars on the ceiling above the crowd!’ Fraser cites Died Pretty at the Enmore Theater in Sydney: ‘Their singer Ron Peno is one of the finest performers this country has produced. And Tokyo Dome in Japan, I saw Aerosmith there and when Tyler motioned the audience to clap along, every goddamn person in the stadium did it, even way up in the nose bleeds, it was a cool experience.’ Their dream line up would be a guitar frenzy, with Van Halen, Fishbone, Turnstile, Jellyfish, Winger and themselves.

‘It’s more stream of consciousness, nihilistic lyrics like Iggy Pop’

They take us on a shimmery journey in ‘The Open Sea’, with holiday vibes emitting from the soaring vocals. If The Beach Boys wrote gnarly, dirty, punky riffs, it would sound exactly like this, grabbing the listener with a real ear worm of a riff, before Fraser comes thundering in on vocals. Mentally, you’re at the beach – in spite of the darker lyrics –  by the time the hooky chorus first comes around. ‘That’s another JB/Marcus song,’ Wolf said. Fraser weighs in: ‘It’s got a bit of indie BritPop influence in it, subconsciously. The lyrics get a bit dark (they’re about letting the ocean carry you away), they’re a metaphor for letting go of your inhibitions. Lately, I’m trying to write happier songs about apples and oranges and what not (laughs). JB had the song and the melody for the chorus, that was the placeholder, so I looked for lyrics that matched the phrasing. I wrote the lyrics while driving in my work ute, it wasn’t about anything specific like, say, a pirate (laughs), it’s more stream of consciousness, nihilistic lyrics like Iggy Pop, I love him! Between us, we all combine our own personal musical influences. Nowadays, with bands, there’s a lot of crossover with genres, we don’t want to sound old hat.’ There’s clearly no danger of that, as attested to by what we can expect from their upcoming songs: ‘We’ve got some new songs that range from thrash metal to power pop!’ Wolf said excitedly.

One of the standout tracks on ‘Another Day, Another Squalor…’ is ‘Hysterical’, which kicks off with a sunny beat; it’s their love letter to the music community. Influenced by glam rock, it includes a piano homage to Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’. They unveil a heavier side in the bridge courtesy of the distorted guitars, chunky bass licks, and powerful percussion. As it kicks off: “Somebody get me off the street tonight. I gotta get out of my mind. I wanna go where the people feel alive.”

‘Monday Morning (Prayer For Tony)’ is a fit closer, written about Fraser’s neighbour who was frequently subjected to death threats by his drug addicted roommate: ‘I’m not sure what happened with Tony, I moved out of where I was. I’m hoping he got out of that situation, that building sounded like a living hell, there’s a google review that paints the picture pretty well.’ It’s their heaviest song on the EP, with the hard rock verging on metal riffs and atmospheric bass taking the listener out on a high.

However, next up, they’re throwing us a delightful curveball in the form of a cover of ABBA’s ‘S.O.S’, which is due out in late-August: ‘There’s a lot more guitar in it,’ Wolf said. Fraser agrees: ‘We transposed the piano part to guitars.’ Wolf jumps in: ‘We’ll be adding lots of vocal harmonies and guitar overdubs to beef it up. It’s been a staple in our live set for the past couple of months and gets a great reception from the audience. We can’t wait to put our spin on it!’

The band formed in late-2019 in Sydney’s inner west music scene. They soon won fans over on the local scene with high-octane performances and their debut single ‘Your Time Is Now’ found new fans globally after it was picked up by Alice Cooper on his popular radio program, Nights with Alice Cooper: ‘We’ve been big fans of Alice nearly our whole lives!,’ Wolf said. ‘It was a big surprise to find he had been enjoying our music and continually playing us on his show.’

‘All the Van Halen guys would have been fun to drink with!’

Fraser says of the Aussie music scene that ‘straightforward punk has been our biggest export’. Wolf cites Newcastle, Australia band Well? as being someone to watch: ‘Check out their song ‘Calling Your Name’, they’re a really high-energy fun band to watch.’ Fraser agrees: ‘They’re on the prog side of rock, topical lyrics and female-fronted. Their stage show is incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it, the way they win over the audience, that’s the hardest thing. We also really like Aussie rock band Black Aces, they come from a town called Bendigo in rural Victoria. And our friends Reckless Coast, who you know (a rock band from Brisbane), they’re awesome, we love playing with them! It’s a 12-hour drive for us to get to Brisbane so we don’t get to gig with them as much as we like. Hopefully we’ll be back their way soon!’

If he could go for a pint with anyone alive or dead, Fraser picks Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott: ‘You said “pint” and I thought of him! We love Thin Lizzy, I would love to see how he operated when flirting with women, he seemed very chilled! Preferably before he got deep into the heroin, though.’ Wolf looks at him: ‘That chilled him out too much! I’d have to pick Eddie Van Halen circa ’78 so I can pick up all his secrets on the guitar before everyone else. All the Van Halen guys would have been fun to drink with!’ We get chatting about Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang, who fronts LA rock band Mammoth WVH and who performed at Taylor Hawkins’ tribute concert in London last year: ‘I feel that Wolfgang was channeling his dad, that concert was amazing,’ Fraser said. ‘Justin Hawkins was amazing there as well, he still looks soooo good! He still fits the jumpsuits he wore at the start of their career (laughs)!’ I say that I caught a few minutes of The Darkness’ set at Hard Rock Hell last year and that they were brilliant. ‘We never pass up a chance to see The Darkness, they’re always brilliant, we love them!,’ Fraser said. 

Funny moments have been par for the course as well, as Fraser recounts: ‘We were performing a rocked up ‘Waltzing Matilda’ with Jimeoin at a caravan park in Yamba. The entire trip was ridiculously funny for many reasons. The sound guy at this particular shindig made us feel as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit!’

They’ve had some “pinch yourself” moments as well, according to Wolf: ‘A stranger came up to me all alone in the crowd at a Gene Simmons solo show at the Enmore Theater in Sydney and told me he’d give me a backstage pass if I followed him to the back door at the end of the night,’ he said. ‘I thought he was full of shit but went with him anyway (laughs). Sure enough, I end up backstage sitting at a table with Gene and his band eating their catering and drinking their beers. Gene was super accommodating, he sat and chatted away with me and two crew members for close to an hour before he had to leave. He told me that KISS were about to go on a three-year long world tour and that he was “getting too old for this shit”. A couple of months later, they announced their farewell tour. Moral of the story: always talk to strangers!’

(Top photo from left to right: Odie, Jack B, Marcus and Jack F.)