THERE AIN'T NO SANTI CLAUSE
Relax! Leash the hounds! There's not a single mention of Coldplay anywhere in the next 600 words. Nothing even touched by their hand. Unless, of course, you count Santogold, who was a guest on their American tour recently and has spent the rest of 2008 posing for style magazines and spinning her story to hungry journalists.
It's not a bad tale though is it? A former music student, she slipped into a career as an A&R talent scout for Epic Records before winding up as the singer in an American punk band. At this point Martin Heath - the man who discovered The Killers - emerges from the gloom to offer her a solo deal (which explains why I saw the well-spoken Heath, purposefully circulating the backstage area at Reading Festival a few weeks back like a cross between Peter Jones from Dragons Den and AA Gill).
Since then she's guested on Mark Ronson's celeb-studded Version album; apparently recorded a song with one of NERD and Julian Casablancas from The Strokes and released her debut album. Which is all well and good but I think Gold - real name Santi White - might know too much.
It almost sounds as if the experience of working on both sides of the industry has taught her how to make a record - with a variety of co-songwriters - which covers a multitude of markets without upsetting anybody (apart from grouchy fans like me who wanted her to be a cross between Debbie Harry, Donna Summer and Queen Latifah). When it's good though, the eponymous album is by far and away the best record of its type this year. And not simply for the almost-hit singles like Lights Out, but for the hidden greats like I'm A Lady, which is cruelly stuck somewhere near the end of the record.
I'm not even sure if it appears in her, apparently short, live set because having gone to see her last week at London's KOKO ("she'll be on at 9.30 Steve") I had to leave again at 10pm to go to work - at which point her warm-up DJ was still busy on stage trying to scratch Cure records into assorted hip-hop refrains. It's a subtle nod to her 80s reference points which mesh on the album with pulsing electro rhythms and nu-skool funk.
It'll be interesting to see if the album gets a second wind at any point - especially now that Gold has been outflanked, in America at least, by the singer she's been most compared to: MIA.
MIA's back story is, if anything, even more convoluted than Santogold's (it's worth investigating if you have a minute) although I first met her when she did the sleeve art for the Elastica single The Bitch Don't Work. Even then she struck me as being very single-minded (the sort of person who suffered fools about as gladly as The Fall's Mark E Smith on something of an off day). In fact there was a time when she was allegedly changing managers on a basis which would make some Premier League clubs blush.
But the long wait for the Big Hit is over. Having spent the past three years courting controversy and accumulating rave reviews in the States - her Kala LP was named Rolling Stone Album Of the Year in 2007 - she's in the Billboard Top 5 with the reissued Paper Planes single. Benefiting from a wily sample from The Clash's Straight To Hell, not to mention an appearance in the film Pineapple Express (that might have something to do with it!), she's one of the few British artists to crack the top end of the chart this year.
I wonder if Ash will be assaulted by her song as it blares out of the radio everywhere when they touch down in New York soon. The trio wound up their current gigging commitments by playing their 1977 album in its entirety at London's Roundhouse and Astoria last week. I was at the Roundhouse myself actually, worrying that this might be a nostalgia trip too far. But it was a terrific night (even if you obviously knew the setlist before they played it). In many ways it worked because as a band on stage they haven't really changed. Charlotte Hatherley came and went and now it's back to the same three people, throwing the same shapes and looking still, ever so slightly embarrassed by their own popularity. Did they ever get an ego? Would they be bigger Rock Stars if they had?
And what happens now that they've publicly said they won't be releasing another album in the old traditional way? (I've been given a clue here by their management, but all I can say is that they'll be recording in October and then expect the unexpected.)
Apologies if that's an awful tease.... is that the sound of a pack of dogs I can hear?
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