Santogold - 'Lights Out' & Not-As-Famous-As-They-Used-To-Be-Indie-Band stellastarr*

Wow, I was just playing 'Creator' by Santogold, and then I went on stellastarr*'s MySpace (yes, both the lower-case-ness and the asterisk are all deliberate - *sigh*), and just as 'Creator' finished, 'Lost in Time' played from the MySpace player, and the transition was kinda AMAZING. I'm not gonna try and recreate it for fear of my perfect memory being cruelly exploded, but feel free...

Aaaaanyway - I'm so late on Santogold, who I initially dismissed as little more than M.I.A.'s over-hyped little sister, that now that I've taken a listen to the album and kinda really liked it, the overcrowded bandwagon has left me standing forlornly in its dust waving my hat in the air and squinting.

'Lights Out' is all over evening Radio 1 at the moment, and deservedly so. I heard the song a coupla times before I found out who it was, and was surprised to discover that it was Santogold. Coz it's purty close to standard indie music, y'know, with guitars and everything, as opposed to the crazy eclectic ragga-hip-alt-dancehall-ska-electro kinda thang I'd been expecting of her. What it sounds like more than anything else to my ears is stellastarr*, whose self-titled 2003 debut I still love. I'm listening to it RIGHT NOW (as I write this, prob not as you read this...). I'm not sure *why* it sounds like stellastarr*, I think it might be in the jumpy vocals in the chorus - judge for yourself:

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from Santogold)

mp3: [mp3 removed]
(from stellastarr*)

Both of these songs are happy-making, so if you like to be happy then I would advise clickin' on 'em. Yay. Also: stellastarr* are currently recording a third album. This is A Good Thing. Yay, again.

That Track With Julian Casablancas, Pharrell Williams and Santogold for Converse. Right here, y'all :)

It's called 'My Drive Thru', it's kinda funky, the guitar line occasionally sounds like it comes in a fraction of a second too late, and it makes one bob winsomely in one's seat. And look at this lovely photo. It's like 'OMGlikeherfootislikethesamefootaslikehisfootthatsliketotallyfreakinAMAZING':


And the phrase "It's summer in the city" just feels like exactly the sort of phrase that Julian Casablancas should be talk-singing. And "We all wanna dance / Just wanna dance, dance" is totally the sort of sentiment the Santogold should be expressing in typically sassy fashion. And Pharrell is just singing in falsetto, which is auditory spectacle enough on its own, so I'm not really that fussed about the actual words.

This is what Santi White (or -ogold) said about the track:
"Everybody on it does their own separate thing and we didn't do it together so it ends up being just this weird long song with sort of everybody with lots of their own personalities separate."
It's better than that would suggest, in that it's not just a load of random shoved-together-ness. Or maybe it is, but it's all tied together with a catchy guitar riff. So y'know - it's fun, and what more did you expect, right?

mp3: N*E*R*D feat. Julian Casablancas and Santogold - My Drive Thru
(for Converse's 100th anniversary)