The Santiago Steps
A-flutter  (dorcal-monster)

originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2003

Sometimes a band will make it really, really easy for you. For the Santiago Steps, that moment comes four tracks into A-flutter, when they give in and cover “I’m In Love With A Girl.” That simplifies my job immensely, telling me what they’re shooting for as well as what they can accomplish, underscoring the vastness of the gap that lies between the two in the process. Not to harp, but like any Big Star song, it should be a ringer, and anybody tackling it has their choice of two approaches (depending on whether they take their cue from the first or the last line): ebullient celebration or wide-eyed terror. That the Santiago Steps neglect both in favor of a sort of enervated detachment, as if a message which should be delivered from the very core of one’s being is instead tossed off in an offhand love-ya-babe manner, sheds light on their fundamental shortcomings. Blowing a gimme, they don’t stand a chance with their originals, a sort of low-blood-sugar smartypants pop that thinks it’s clever to exploit uncoolness without really inhabiting it (be wary of “Nerd Pop Girl,” not merely for its desperately cutesy title and wan faux-country backdrop but for referencing one of its betters, in this case Fountains of Wayne’s similarly themed “Leave The Biker”). The closing “Wake” is simply a mess, a pretty melody fragment that goes absolutely nowhere too many times to bother counting, calling attention in the process to the perplexingly random imagery that the band fails to realize means nothing taken either one line at a time or in aggregate.

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