The Starvations Shares Tribute To Los Angeles As First Reissue Arrives

01-11-2025

(UTG) Los Angeles band The Starvations (ca. 1995-2005) released the first of their series of reissues from their back catalog on Friday, at a time that's particularly fraught for the band of native Angelinos. Out now is the first album reissue, an updated master of their breakthrough 2003 album Get Well Soon originally released via GSL (Mars Volta, The Locust). Hear & share Get Well Soon on all DSPs and Bandcamp.

Songwriter/frontman Gabriel Hart shares his conflicted feelings about releasing the album today while the band's hometown is in crisis: "While it's been locked in for months now, I was, and remain, conflicted about Get Well Soon being reissued on the weekend of Los Angeles's devastating wildfires, especially when they're still raging as I write this, with the displaced still in-between homes with no real resolution in sight to any of it. Our drummer Ian Harrower had to evacuate Tuesday night; the status of his family's house still unforeseen.

"Even though I left L.A. for the High Desert ten years ago, a huge part of my heart still lives there with members of my family and close friends while the rest of me is out here, feeling separated from my endangered platoon.

"If Get Well Soon is considered an L.A. album, it's a nightmarish one: full of structures built, only to witness their crumbling and love tempered with devotion, only to watch it waste away. When we finished the album in 2003, I felt it was almost too bleak, which is why I wanted to call it Get Well Soon; if the album contained no hope, maybe its title could? The album's cover art and lyric sheet was then fashioned into a sort of saccharine, semi-sarcastic greeting card in ironic contrast to the record's brutal content, in detached and tardy consolation for our countless losses.

"Only this time, we really mean it. So here's to y(our) sacred city and its stronger recovery, Love, Gabriel Hart." Stream or purchase the reissue here