#startstatic

How many hip, happin’ + hard rockin’ bands hail from sunny Santa Barbara, CA -- the Jewel of Cali’s Central Coast? 

Can’t say for sure, but Pop-Punkers-come-Alt-Rockers Sugarcult is definitely one of them.

Driven by crunchy-guitars-and-emotive-vocals, this punky quartet crafted a rocked-up sound that was certainly familiar, yet uniquely all their own.

A fact the group’s 2001 debut, Start Static, illustrates at FULL volume.

Though launched in the early aughts, Sugarcult never quite capitalized on the era’s “emo” boom. A scene blow-up that eventually saw bands like Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Panic At The Disco, among others, reach platinum-record sales + sold out stadium tour heights.

Why didn’t it “happen” for the ‘Cult? 

Maybe it’s because Sugarcult hit the scene a tad to early? Or perhaps, they were just too good to gain the mainstream’s full-throttled embrace? The “general public” is, after all, notorious for gravitating toward MOR acts with all their rough edges polished to a smooth sheen.

But regardless, Start Static is a revved up rocker of a record, chock full of suburbanite angst.

Singer-songwriter, Tim Pagnotta, works through his issues -- loads of anxiety, depression, alienation, and good ole boredom -- on standout tracks like Stuck in America (who doesn’t hate from whence they came?), Bouncing Off the Walls Again (an ode to discovering Mom + Dad coke stash), Daddy’s Little Defect (and aren’t we all just a collection our parent’s missteps?), and the plaintiff ballad, Crashing Down (noting, once again, heart break sucks!).

Though Tim and his cohorts never hit the big leagues, Sugarcult managed to capture three solid records worth of rockin’ tunes, not to mention a breezy ride on the rock’n’roll A-train for nearly a decade before calling it quits.