So here we are, in the back of a Ford talking about dinosaurs. This is not your average interview. Talking with Analogue just hours before their album launch in Crawdaddy band members Grattan, Arron and Crickey are debating the higher merits of the water born dinosaurs without a hint of worry or expectation of the night ahead. In less than a few hours they will launch their debut album, the oddly named It’s Easy To Be Alive You Just Are, but it’s dinosaurs that are nagging on their minds.

Star Little Thing are a strange mix. Lead singer Grattan is quiet and contemplative. Arron is an average, cool Dub. Then there’s Crickey- sporting an odd mix of fashions (including a hat seemingly formed from the backs of a legion of sheep)-the enigma, carefully pondering our questions like a scientist working out an equation. Last year they released the explosive and incredibly danceable single ‘Lovers of Life’ that was a revelation in sound and style compared to what many of their Dublin peers were throwing out. It felt as if they had blown away the cobwebs residing on the morose shoulders of the singer-songwriters glutting Dublin and were heralding in a new exciting era in dance within our fair city.

Grattan and Arron had previously been in a rock band together, which over time dissipated. On the way they bumped into the wonderfully eccentric Crickey. A sculptor and a lover of jazz he is never without a bunch of slightly worn notebooks in his hand in which he jots down words, lines and lyrics about anything and everything. Though unorthodox, something special happened in the brew that has now become Star Little Thing. “When we meet up it’s like a fusion of the three of us” Grattan explains from the driving seat. “I could be writing on anything. I could be somewhere completely different and the guys can be too and then we meet”.

Hours were spent in Grattan’s basement over the last year creating the album. Their first single ‘Where Is The Child Gone’ is a brooding stomper of a dance tune that simmers with ambition. Though it is the video that catches Analogue’s eye. Part of the video involves Grattan dancing in the middle of a busy Dame Street in front of bemused onlookers. “ We did it once with four or five cameras” Grattan tells us, trying to hide his grin. “This cop was literally on us so. If you look at the footage the cop is just looking at us for ages and he was just sitting there on a bike”. “The cop literally said to him what was he doing wearing a top with a map of the world on it and yellow trousers” adds Crickey, “so he said it’s a map of the world so he knew where he was going!” This wasn’t the first foray into the strange on a video shoot for the band. “The one on Moore Street was weirder!” Grattan continues. The video for ‘Lovers of Life’ involved a trip to Moore Street with the three lads wearing an odd metallic chassis with seven cameras strapped onto it, made by Crickey himself. “It took twenty minutes. We ran down the road, than another street, which was a dead end and all there was was this Chinese guy just looking at us!”

The oddness continues into the live set. While the two giant hands which were a regular feature are gone, Crickey spices things up with glow sticks and flashlights. “The music’s full on” Arron tells us. It is in their live show that one gets the full experience of Star Little Thing. They blast out a set which by the end of their crowning night in Crawdaddy has a bunch of Brazilians at the front almost fellating one of Crickey’s glow sticks in a fit of music induced ecstasy. It is this combination of quirkiness, great music and blistering live sets that make Star Little Thing stand out from the crowd. “We want it to be about the music” Crickey tells me quietly and affirmatively, “that’s what we want”. And that’s what we want. Star Little Thing is a band that is bursting with potential, all wrapped up in a cheeky and affectionate Dublin charm.

Conor O'Neill is a winetaster and former Buenos Airen, studying History and Politics in Trinity.
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