Santogold

It’s 2008. The Tories are back in power, Lily Allen’s presenting The National Lottery and The Automatic’s classic line-up has reformed for a glorious one-off special. Oh, and one more thing: Santogold is ruling Planet Earth.

‘LES Artistes’ is the most incredible, powerful, King Kong pop-song to come out of America since ‘Crazy In Love’ and couldn’t be more of an obvious hit if it was Elvis and 2Pac singing a Christmas version of ‘Candle In The Wind’. In fact, it’s so good that Lizard King have decided to release it as a B-side. A B-side. Perhaps in their opinion the planet is too fragile for a song of this magnitude, or they’re just trying to manufacture another ‘Young Folks’. Think of this sneaky release as a subtle infiltration of humanity’s ranks by Santogold’s invading force, which will no doubt arrive with fanfare and a proper release in about six months.

The upshot of this is that you lot can own this song for the time being. Yep, in about eight months your bus driver will be singing it, your mum will be doing aqua-aerobics in time with it, and it’ll be soundtracking every montage the BBC can pull out of its arse.

A-side ‘Creator’ is a nod to Santogold’s hipster lineage which sees her rubbing shoulders with MIA and working with booty-bass heroes Spank Rock. Reminiscent of ‘Bird Flu’, it opens with witch-like screeches subtitled by a trippy bassline and thunderous drums, but it’s nothing compared to its B-side: once the chorus arrives, you can see why. Exploding synths swoop gracefully while a great mass of white noise hoses the fat from your brain. This is Fleetwood Mac power-pop reimagined by people with taste, it’s the Pretenders with edge, it’s anthemic and glorious. It’s just a shame it’s not the real single, eh? Until 2008 then.