From Dusted

Take It Personally is the Starlite Desperation’s third full-length, and their first formal outing since Violate a Sundae was released Cold Sweat in 2006. The songs, apparently, had a long gestation period. You can hear a couple of them on a WFMU radio show from 2004,DJ’d by Dusted contributor Mike Lupica. Three of the best cuts – 'WeDon’t Do Time', 'My Violin' and 'I Lost My Bees' – made their firstappearance on a tour-only CD called We Don’t Do Time.

Despite the evident time lag, there’s nothingstale about this CD. It’s fresh, taut and ferocious, its garage rockprimitivism in uneasy equilibrium with glam-tinged flash and posing.Consider the riff on 'I Lost My Bees,' the bass muttering, the guitarsoff the rails like 'Peter Gunn' gone mad. The sense of darkness, theecho, the drama all remind me of the Wipers, but there’s a lushtheatricality in these tunes at odds with post-punk’s minimalaesthetic. For a good 30 seconds, on the 12/8 blues, 'I Love This!!,'singer Dante Adrian sounds exactly like Freddy Mercury, all flourishand preen above gritty guitar vamps.

All these songs have an anarchic energy. Theirparts interlock rather than meld together, everything distinct anddissonant. Guitars zig-zag in and around bass lines. Drums ricochetaround fractious melodies. There’s a sense of reaction and interplay,rather than a common plan. Listen to the sudden flashes of new-waveguitar erupting on 'We Don’t Do Time,' almost at random intervals amidscratchy bass and drums, and, later on, how the vocal counterpoints ('We don’t, we don’t, we don’t do...')intersect with the main triumphant chorus. It’s a slash and retreatkind of music, full of implied aggression and premeditated violence,dotted with dead stops and multi-instrumented onslaughts. It is alsoexactly the sort of thing to get recalcitrant asses moving.

And then there are the lyrics, surreal to thepoint of nonsensicality. Adrian is evidently the kind of writer who iswilling to let the rhyme drive the line, yet hisstream-of-consciousness connections between words, sounds and imagesoften produces arresting results. Lines like 'When you buy a star / From a drug czar' or 'At the water park / Mingle with the sharks'from 'Don’t Wait Until After You Die' are like twisted Dr. Seussrhymes, hop-on-popping their way into your limbic system. Do they meananything? Do you have any chance of figuring it out? Probably not, butthere’s a dada kind of symmetry to them. You can’t help probing them alittle to see if they can be made into some kind of sense.

It’s easy to see why Starlite Desperation provedtoo volatile for Capitol. There’s just too much force and intelligence and daring on the table to package into next year’s Redwalls. Still,you have to sympathize with this very talented band wasting three years while trying to find singles for the majors. They could have been making more albums like this one instead.

Anonymous Amazon Review

As a long time fan of both Starlite Desperation and Dante Adrain, I'veseen enough shows to have heard a number of the songs on this albumbefore they were released. One in particular, Even if You're Lost, hasbeen stuck in my head for over a year. I could not wait to get my handson the album so I could get to my IT song but It wasn't just the ITsong, really, this album is the IT album! SD never ceases to impress.My Violin makes me feel out of control, I Love This demands a ride in ahot place in an old car with a bunch of sweaty people you love, MultiMagic Millions seems like it was born to be a single, wait a minute,where is that song? Its in my head all the time, damn, once again Ihave to walk around all miserable without that one song. Anyway, MyFavorite Place has such a powerful guitar riff, my knees do that orgasmshake when the song starts. I've been sonically enthralled by DA'sguitar for like, 20 years...I like to say I can't wait to hear whatcomes next but I'm going to take some time absorbing this one. Ifinally got a CD copy of Go Kill Mice (its just so hard to listen tovinyl in the car) and had barely become acquainted with the album whenI had to rip it out and replace it with Take it Personally. The albumsare so amazingly different from one another. Go Kill Mice just seemstame, like the Thorazine version of Starlite Desperation, all exceptfor Go Kill Mice and Mona Lisa Snake (My IT song for the last threeyears). Maybe its good to be able to sound so unlike what some expectto hear, raw like sushi on their first release, Show You What a BabyWon't, all clean and fresh and sharp. Varying degrees of experimentalfabulousness that was so unmistakably DA with Lion Fever on Lustre andLost Kids on their self named EP. Raw like beef on Violate a Sundae,all dirty and thick and meaty. Then finally throwing us starving fans abone, marrow still wet with Don't Do Time. And now, now the coagulationof years of adjective bashing culminating into a surprising balancebetween perfection and clever curiosity. Welcome to the moment we'veall been waiting for, we think, until the next album when SD reminds usthat sometimes we don't know what we've been waiting for until itaccosts us, Personally of course, with gratuitous goodness.

From L.A. Weekly

  By Rena Kosnett

Los Angeles trio the Starlite Desperation have accumulated a laundrylist of career variations, including: label changes — GSL, FlappingJet, Cold Sweat, Capitol; locale changes — San Francisco, Detroit, LosAngeles; band-name transformations — Starlite Desperation, Lost Kids,Spirit Army; and a lead singer whose own moniker changes just asfrequently — Dante White, Dante Aliano, Dante Adrian, Dante AdrianWhite. But their music is consistently recognizable, mainly due toAdrian's delicate and sophisticated vocals, which contrast and cutthrough Jeff Ehrenberg's garage-punk drumming. The high timbre andloose, experimental feel of Take It Personally, their fourth, is most reminiscent of Starlite's first album, 2001's Show You What a Baby Won't.Both have an on-edge intensity and reach their greatest potential withthe simpler pop tracks. New songs 'Spirit Army,' 'My Favorite Place'and 'I Love This!' accomplish much while remaining deceptively simple,invoking feelings of 'Sweet Cherry Wine'–era Tommy James in Starlite'scapacity to deliver catchy, dynamic songs by working and reworkingaccessible pop formulas — and then throwing in a little unexpectedtexture to shake those formulas up. Take It Personallyis ashowcase for what Starlite Desperation do best — writing greatgarage/pop tunes that stick in your head for days and days and days.

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From LA Record....

by Jennifer Brandon....

I've been home sick and listening to the new StarliteDesperation for the last couple of hours and my ears finally popped on rotationthree. I can hear (and feel!) my left ear draining and I can't deny myoverwhelming joy. This record has a straight-up rock and roll intensity thatlasts from first track to last. I can honestly say that it is rare that I listento a record from start to finish..a few times in a row, even! The music ispure, rocking, solid and leading me back to health! It's exciting without anyfancy bells and whistles- sometimes the best recipes are the simplest. In thiscase: guitar, bass, drums and vocals. "Why So Heavy" makes me want todrive 100 miles per hour on the 10 towards Joshua Tree with the windows down toend up watching the band live in the middle of the desert. "SpiritArmy" is the perfect punk anthem - a poppy, punchy in-your-facethunderbolt. And "Coastal Living" made me snarl and fake mosh-dancein my kitchen while making my famous garlic, onion and tomato magic cold remedysoup. Yes - just keep it simple and powerful, people.

From CMJ
By Eric Davidson

It would seem, given the title and overall musical thrust and lyricalhints of this record, that this nomadic band of sickly suaveglam-damners might be availing themselves of some well deservedanimosity. Leader Dante White and his shifting cohorts have been one ofthe most underrated rock bands of the last decade. Long story short,Starlite Desperation started out in Detroit in the latter '90s,strutting out slinky rhythms, suggestive lyrics and White's GQ-readycheekbones as some kind of Roxy Music for the DIY house show set. GoldStandard Laboratory singles and a great '98 debut followed, tours withthe Make-up, then—like the dapper demons of similarly suave Britpopbands that inhabit them—Starlite took a little long to drop the decentfollow-up (Go Kill Mice). Label snafus, band members came,went, the band moved to Oakland, then Portland, then...Mars? A Whiteproject called Spirit Army floated around, a quite fine Starlite EPsurfaced in 2004, and now this kind of comeback album.

It follows that this band take awhile to get their records done, as Take It Personallyattests to the fact that there is a sly layering that happensthroughout each song that probably requires mucho mixing to wrap up.The band's sound though is more upfront rock-solid than ever, asthey've left their quirkier edges back on Mars, usually for good. "MyFavorite Place" takes a stomping boogie riff/beat and hand-holds itback into a bedroom of 50's bachelor pad reverb and lines like "My loveis hopeless," before the band rushes back out into the rockin' livingroom party. In "I Lost My Bees Part 2," a stacatto guitar lick tries tocut through ominous psych whirling in the background, a near-goth moodmetered with Dante's increasingly accusatory voice, and then the bandonce again rises to the occasion by not succumbing to rote rocking outwhile staying knife-fight sharp.

Considering the band's careful consideration towards bending but notbreaking the verse-chorus-verse modes, some songs just don't stick out.And White has really let his Marc Bolan bubbly beat lyricism fly, butcan still stick a line like, "And we strut about like swans / whilethey look on us as prawns" outta nowhere. That line in factencapsulates what theme can be ascertained from a notoriouslymysterious bunch like this: still waiting for a trend to develop aroundthem for support, but keeping a self-effacing determination alive. AsWhite offers in "Why So Heavy?!?": "I think you'll agree that we're notso heavy."