A Spine-Tingling Outing From Film Star

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FILM STAR

“Film Star”

Super Cottonmouth

It’s not stated which film star most directly inspires Film Star, but a spin through the debut album by this arty Costa Mesa garage band conjures delicious aural images of Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Lon Chaney doing their worst in a shadow world of black and white. If you’re in the mood for a listening experience that holds the spine-shivery pleasures of a spooky bedtime story, this is your ticket.

In fact, Film Star summons the shade of a literary star to make its album-opening keynote statement: “Edgar Allan was his name / Filled his books with strange things.” The track, “Edgar Allan” also serves as an impressive introduction to the band’s key musical figures.

Guitarist Piers Brown starts off bouncing frantic blasts against the cages of a typically lock-step beat, before finding an escape path to tunnel along with probing intensity. And organist Geoff Harrington, a producer previously best known for recording the likes of Rocket From the Crypt, Supernova and Big Drill Car at his Saturation studio, creates a dark and swirly weave of gothic-psychedelic tonalities.

The vocals by Brown and Harrington typically are buried alive in the mix, emerging gradually from their aural crypts to evoke “Caine Munity”-like encroaching mania (“Tight Ship”), druggy journeys to the center of the mind (“What’s inside this cake that makes you feel so strange,” a John Cale-ish voice intones in “Dazed”) and, of course, to scare the children with spooky bedtime stories. “Who says you’re alone when the night winds creak? / Who says you’re alone when your night dreams speak?” goes one refrain.

Stylistically, Film Star draws from the psychedelic ‘60s and the punk-presaging early-’70s underground without being too obviously retro. Certain passages pay overt vocal and musical nods to Neil Young, and Harrington’s electric piano on the scene-shifting epic, “The Relationship,” makes it seem as if the band wondered how it would have sounded had Ray Manzarek of the Doors ever sat in with Young and Crazy Horse.

The piece’s more airy and hopeful end section sounds borrowed from Grand Funk Railroad’s “Closer to Home”--an apt reference, given the track’s theme of being cut emotionally adrift and seeking a way back. Also, it wouldn’t be surprising to find a bit of old Modern Lovers and Atomic Rooster (among the most emphatically rocking and least pretentious of the early-’70s British progressive-rock bands) in the Film Star members’ record collections.

Overall, though, it matters less where Film Star foraged for its raw materials than how well and concisely they have been strung together to create something strange but enticing--just like a good, scary tale.

(Available from Super Cottonmouth Records, P.O. Box 480555, Los Angeles, CA 90048. E-mail address: info@supercottonmouth.com; Web site: https://www.supercottonmouth.com.)

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.