Santah – You’re Still A Lover

Santah
You’re Still A Lover
(Independent)
★★★

Stanton McConell, you are such the crooner, aren’t you? Okay, maybe not a crooner in the traditional sense, but when I hear your voice seep into “Springfield”—I assume about the Illinois town near where the band was conceived, all joining together with their mutual interest of college life at the University of Illinois—I immediately want to loose myself. The slight daze you put your voice in is mesmerizing. The shoutouts on “North Coast” surrounds itself to a hypnotic nature. Sure it breaks up the monotony, but who needs punctuation when you have the flow Santah has on You’re Still A Lover.

Every time when I reach that point in the EP, I question, “Is that necessary?”   It’s not like you have to be like Here We Go Magic, is it? I’m sure you found something about that attractive, but it’s dismissive. A statement clause that is probably more important to the band than it is to the listener, I have to backtrack just to see what exactly they find so important in this song.

Santah – Springfield

For an EP, it packs quite a punch. The drum cadence is like a spiral into indie decadence. And beyond the music, the group knows how to throw in a degree of finesse to claim their territory.

It’s nice to feel that Midwestern gaze on you without trying to overthrow your own sound as many bands that surround the style Santah presents. It’s why “Springfield” is so immediately tempting and “Teeth” is so addictive, I you found your dad’s old AM radio and this was being piped through it. I would fall in love with it five times over. The production gives it an eerie timelessness through shoegaze fashion, and you do not want it to end.

All of these songs are strong and although some weigh more than others in priority, you want to latch on to them all as a collective. It could be that it’s easy to forget. I have listened to this EP more than a handful of times and every listen, before I am aware of it, I am three-fourths through this EP, and I feel like I just hit play every time. So I do it again, and again, and…

What I can conclude from this is that it’s best to sit down and let You’re Still A Lover consume you. It isn’t hard to do. More than likely it will be an unconscious decision.