Santogold – Self Titled – Review
Santogold’s self released debut was released on April 29th so why I am reviewing it? I think I definitely owe it for wrongly ignoring the Santogold craze. I was actually sent an e-mail promoting her release but the e-mail was both in poor taste and only one song was streamed on her myspace. It wasn’t giving me much to work with even with L.E.S. Artistes being a catchy track at the time. I totally ignored Santogold for reasons out of her control and due to the poor quality in effort by the PR worker (some for major artists suck so incredibly much). It should never really come to that and where I should rather keep my mistakes secret, I’ll be forgiven right?
The first track off the album, is L.E.S. Artistes a track I’m already accustomed to. I may have some issue with having the single as the first track…will anyone check out the rest of the album? Thankfully, that isn’t the case. L.E.S. Artistes is a catchy track that makes fun of the New York scene (Lower East Side) artists and how they perceive themselves. I imagine it is artistes with someone calling themselves “I’m an artistes” with some kind of poor accent. The theme of making fun of people who think a lot of themselves has been applied many times but still a good song.
Santogold for the most part is a pop artist, creating pop songs but not afraid to experiment. Some people tend to have the wrong definition of a pop song but I really just mean entirely structured with some things added here and there. My second favorite song is Creator Vs Switch and Freq Nasty. I specifically love the starting with the annoying animal sounding squeaks. I thought I would hate it but I found it entirely catchy.
For the most part I find this album enjoyable, tons of different elements and experimentation througout the album. It feels like patchwork at times, with just throwing a bunch of songs together that have no theme or connection. As an album it doesn’t quite flow. Sometimes I have a hard time believe it’s even her on the track.
A lot of very good songs on this album, but it takes the genre-less thing too seriously, it’s really just a creation of the fans to compare something else to but this album just forces itself to be different for no apparent reason. It’s apparent that this album is very good but the fact that it feels like it wants to be the black sheep of the herd rather then worrying about being better then the rest is a little bit concerning. Some songs I didn’t like and I think due to the amount of variability everyone is bound to like and hate something on this album.
Rating: 4 out of 5
MP3s for your listening pleasure:
L.E.S. Artistes by Santogold
Creator vs Switch and Freq Nasty by Santogold
I’m A Lady by Santogold feat Andrew Trouble
Buy this album at: SanInsoundtogCD UniverseoldAmazon
Tags: album
