SANTA CARLA are a Liverpool five-piece who share a sense of quirky humour, if not necessarily musical sensibilities with Scouse counterparts the Zutons. ‘Shilling Dinner’ is a brash opener of a pop song that mixes up a hatful of la-la harmonies with a memorable chorus and some decidedly twisted lyrics. According to the press note, it’s about a man realising that his girl is a sadistic, gold-digging maniac, prone to bouts of cannibalism – you get the idea. The song ends with singer Simon Barber intoning how he saw the girl in question ‘there on the stair, just like that mouse that went clip-clop on the stair and she said la-la-la…’ – it finishes before we find out if she had clogs on.
Anyway, on ‘Catcher in the Rye’ Barber’s excitable vocals go into overdrive as Santa Carla deliver a spikier, punky number. It’s suitably entertaining, certainly capable of inducing a room full of kids to jump about like lunatics and also provides a platform for other singer Vicky Dempsey to prove she could win Stars In Their Eyes as Kate Bush.
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Not to be outdone, Barber does a more-than-passable Paul McCartney on ‘Cooler Blues’; a bleaker, more thoughtful song that sets a scene based around a snapshot of a Liverpool pub at closing time. For the first time, the piano of Pete Watson becomes prominent and helps to lift the track. The same could be said of final song ‘Liverpool’, a skewed view of the band’s hometown.
All in all, Earworms EP is a fun record that demonstrates that Santa Carla certainly have a lot of potential. It’s also another example of that strange ability Liverpool bands seem to have of capturing the sounds of their city and releasing them in music that you instantly recognise the origins off. Must be something in the Mersey air.
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