The Starvations

Jason Heller August 19, 2004 4:00AM

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Like a modern-day hunger artist, the Los Angeles group the Starvations is a caged, anxious avatar of alienation and dread all but ignored by the fickle fans of the garage-rock revival. And for good reason: Rather than hamming it up or dumbing it down, the quintet's latest releases -- 2003's full-length, Get Well Soon, and the recent single, One Way to Remind -- are cunning, sinewy tangles of taut rock and gaunt desperation. As lean, mean and hollow-cheeked as the Gun Club on crystal or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds sent to bed without their dinner, singer/guitarist Gabriel Hart and his marauding pack of players employ piano, accordion and the occasional gypsy-pitched fiddle to turn their songs of darkness into stark, ravenous pangs of unsuppressed longing. With wails of privation and ichor on its lips, the Starvations make a meaty feast out of the blues-punk and psychobilly traditions.

The Starvations

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