Santigold - Master of My Make-Believe Review

If a rebellion ever comes, someone had better give Santigold the microphone. Her messages, even at their most sloganeering, are coded for the dance floor, and the global approach of her compositions lends them a communal sense of urgency. “We’re the keepers,” Santigold sings near the end of the album, and as the brightly textured keyboards rise to meet the singalong vibe, she drops the bomb: “While we sleep in America our house is burning down.”

That’s as close as Santigold gets to any sort of current-events statement on “Master of My Make-Believe,” her second album and first in four years. It’s a sleek effort, with 11 songs that come in at under 40 minutes, and it opens with a bracing call to arms in “Go!” With help from Yeah Yeah Yeahs members Karen O and Nick Zinner, and production from Q-Tip and Switch, the song is techno-futurism mixed with African beats, and its images of fast food and winter palaces hint at class warfare....full text Sprinkled throughout are more melodic, textured songs, underlining White’s strength as a songwriter (she wrote the criminally underappreciated 2001 debut by R&B singer Res, among other accomplishments from a music career that stretches back to the ‘90s). Over rumbling bass and spastic bursts of guitar, “Disparate Youth” takes a clear-eyed view of street rebellions across the planet: “We know we want more, a life worth fighting for.”

“This isn’t Our Parade” and “The Riot’s Gone" come off as elegies for what might have been; they could be describing the demise of a relationship or a revolution. Best of all is “The Keepers,” a state-of-the-union warning shot tucked inside an engaging melody. “We’re the keepers, while we sleep in America our house is burning down," White sings. Bad vibes are everywhere, but the chorus exhorts us to sing along and the beats guide us to the dancefloor....full text At this point it's difficult to discern whether Master of My Make-Believe is disappointingly inert because it's actually unadventurous or because the rest of the world has simply caught up with White. Would the fusion of twinkling electronic dub with shreddier undertones on the anthemic "Disparate Youth" be more interesting if we didn't have bands like Sleigh Bells melting bubblegum sensibilities into punishing guitar shriek? Or if each week didn't bring a ceaseless wave of remixes pairing artists who never would have appeared in the same mp3 tag three years ago? They're questions White herself is yearning to answer, and struggling. She acknowledges it on the appropriately titled ballad "The Riot's Gone", singing: "I've been searching for an angle/ For a cause I can't defend." She'll admit she knows better than anyone that fight music is hard to make when you can't figure out what you're fighting against....full text Make-Believe is Santigold’s proclamation that she was here first. On the prickly opener “Go!,” she pushes back in militaristic terms against imitators who “try to pull my status, but they couldn’t fake it.” Santigold makes a more convincing case for her turf, though, when she sounds as if she has nothing to prove. The radiant pop anthem “The Keepers” and the dreamy, dubby “Disparate Youth” don’t detour from her debut’s roadmap, but their sounds are just as sweet the second time around. When the singer does tweak her formula, it’s usually to slow it down and soften it. Several tracks co-written by Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner ripple with the low-key pensiveness of that band’s prettiest songs, especially the lovely “This Riot’s Gone.” At just 11 songs and 37 minutes, Make-Believe is a modest work, short on big thrills and surprises, but generous enough with the creature comforts that made Santigold’s debut such a gem. ...full text