This past summer we met Starflake, the experimental, eponymous band founded and led by The Bright Light Social Hour’s Jackie O’Brien, dubbed “Starflake” by none other than the legendary Jimmy Buffet after giving seven-year-old O’Brien his first guitar lesson.
In June we were treated to the band’s debut single, the tropi-punk synth-sational track “NuBooty.” Since then, Starflake has been hard at work recording their highly anticipated first album (release date tbd) which was partially funded by an anonymous $7,000 donation given for a one-of-a-kind “NuBooty butt print” of O’Brien’s behind produced for Flake Fest.
Now, O’Brien and his long-time collaborative compadres are back with a new song titled “Cuando Tomas (In My Head Again)” and it does not disappoint. Once again O’Brien (vocals, bass, guitar, Roland JX-8P, Wurlitzer) is joined by Zac Catanzaro (drums) and Juan Alfredo Ríos (electronic percussion), delivering a track that swings like a cosmogonic pendulum between the ethereal and the funky.
The song starts with O’Brien’s low, persistent bass riding alongside as Catanzaro drives the snare and high-hat to a pulse-raising rhythm while Rios’ percussion fills in the blanks. As the synth melody hits, O’Brien’s voice hovers over the top for the first verse in a dreamy falsetto before taking on an edge as that crazy Roland JX-8P zooms in on the second verse, giving an addictive out-of-time retro vibe.
O’Brien’s lyrics are, as usual, a poetic expression of his lived experiences. While the first and second verses repeat, the final lines of the song are sung in Spanish:
Cuando tomas me haces bailar el rock
Cuando tomas me haces bailar el rock
Cuando tomas me haces bailar
Translated, the line says, “When you drink it makes me dance rock.” This lyrical gem came from a rediscovered letter O’Brien had written to his abuelita when he was five-years-old. At the time he found the letter, he’d been struggling to get a handle on his mental health and reading those words after all these years served as a flash of inspiration. “The letter felt like a message from beyond, a well-timed reminder that movement, dancing, living, BEING is the way – get out of the head and into the body. Simple pleasures like music, family, laughter are to be felt viscerally in order to escape the clouded prison of the mind,” he said.
Indeed, if music has any value for us (at any age), it’s to help us remember we are living, breathing, dancing creatures who are from and for this world. “Cuando Tomas” does just that.