How addiction, Baroque icons, heavy metal and a Greek family in Atlanta helped build one of rock’n’roll’s most compelling new bands.
It’s a stormy night in North London. The venue is small, packed and hot. The young crowd gazes adoringly at four musicians who seem new, old and otherworldly all at once.
There’s glam there but also gothic atmosphere, doomy weight and punk aggression. It’s Ritchie Blackmore with a pop heart. Siouxsie &The Banshees with bigger guitars. Kate Bush with a lascivious hint of Rocky Horror.
At the centre stands singer/guitarist Kimi Shelter, wire-thin in black spandex, all spidery hand gestures and biting chops, a giant black cloud of hair on her head.
Something becomes clear. Starbenders aren’t just a glam rock band: they’re much weirder than that.
“We’re a rock’n’roll band with all these split-offs,” Shelter reasons, “there’s so much goth influence, metal, punk, glam, and we’ve pretty much been underground the whole time.”
Formed in 2013 but solidified in late 2017 – with the arrival of drummer Emily Moon and guitarist Kriss Tokaji – Starbenders marry the aura of a subterranean gang with the skill and songcraft of pop heavyweights. For Shelter, a prodigious classical violinist who picked up a guitar, became a shredder and eventually a singer, it’s been a journey. “I couldn't explain why something like Vivaldi would appeal to me just as much as Children Of Bodom or the Rolling Stones. But I always think, too, it’s 2023, people are putting Doja Cat on the same playlist as Judas Priest. Rock bands need to be given more dignity, again, in terms of [having] the full range of human emotion.”
Shelter spent her early childhood in suburban Atlanta, immersed in classical music and dogged by a family history of drug and alcohol abuse. Life revolved around violin lessons and orchestra practice, at the behest of her mother. Her father, an architect, played Pixies records and taught her to use AutoCAD. Meanwhile her mother wrestled with addiction and mental health issues, at one point keeping about fifteen reptiles in the house.
When Shelter was entering her teens, the family moved to St Simons Island –a remote community on the Georgia coastline. “It did inform quite a bit of my spirit because I was an outsider. I was a little punk kid, I skateboarded, I had purple hair and dressed like a boy.”
The nearest urban centres were Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida, where Shelter fell in with the local hardcore and metal scenes. It wasn’t an easy time. In high school she was so severely bullied she had to be transferred for safety reasons. Duly relocated, she found solace in the nearest music shop – along with Alkaline Trio and other punk artists her older sister introduced her to. “I would bring my guitar to school, and walk to the music store, and just hang
