Listening to Starfucker in my car, I could feel the power of their pop, the party jam nod, the harmony as they refer to sea urchins peeing on your bones and liken love to a rusty bag of nails on the beach. Up close at the Smell, the fuzz stood out, the sweaty rocker side. The sugar on top glistened but the nutty crunchy stuff in the middle gave the cake its flavor.

Starfucker fits into that nebulous area of pop music full of melodies, sound effects, and danceable distorted rock. They share something with Of Montreal and MGMT that could get them played at the mall…without damaging their guts. Live, I got a look at their setup: guitar, keys, turntables, bass, drum, tangles of effects pedals. I also had a good view of Ryan Blornstad’s butt and Josh Hodges’ cleavage. The latter wore a tight, low-cut dress that loosened before stopping around mid-thigh, drawing the eye to his waist, chest, and clip-on earrings. Bandmate Blornstad, dressed a la ‘80s tennis player, has a motor in the back of his honda that’s rarely idle. From this vantage point, the fuzzy stubble on Starfucker’s music rubbed against my chin in a sloppy kiss. The warm, bubbly guitars were prickly and rough. After a while, I moved through the throng of kiddies to the back of the Smell, and from there could hear harmonized voices rise above the distortion, and see Blornstad’s dance moves bounce above shadows like a fly smacking its head against a strobe light.

Pop music has weaved itself into the fabric of this generation’s DNA.—An era religiously dunked in Michael Jackson holy water. The same seed that bred Justin Timberlake also influenced Nirvana youth. The freedom to dance all crazy and in whatever context is something we’ve worked towards for centuries. As the world ends and begins every day, grunge values and club culture join forces in a new breed of soldier. You can see it in Starfucker’s Blornstad dancing like he’s in a C & C Music Factory music video, and opener Atole—a Portland band that mixes disco with post-slur vocal chanting. Singer Manny with long hair slightly resembles Steve Aoki in looks, shirtless, humping his keyboard between dance breaks and high pitched moans that’ll freak out cats and send Julie Andrews running for the hills to retrieve shattered do-re-mi’s. Atole is totally the opposite of Aoki. Both start with “A” but end in completely different piles of substances at the end of the night. I transported this show from the Smell to the Standard Rooftop, only to illuminate the difference between this and that.

P.S.: As I finished this review, Chris Ziegler IM’d me that MJ died. Now that’s weird because it’s like a ghost of pop music past got trapped in my computer. Ahhh….

—Daiana Feuer