Santogold - Santogold

Whoa. Where did this come from? Wasn’t Santogold (Santi White) supposed to be a carbon copy of M.I.A.? Listening through her new self-titled release instead I’m picking up elements of No Doubt, Tegan and Sara, Rilo Kiley, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and yes, M.I.A. as well. After being written off as an M.I.A. clone for months based on a couple tracks, Santi finally gets a chance to strut her stuff, and strut she does. 

Santogold is far and away more diverse than anything M.I.A. has done. Santi is able to go from the danceable and M.I.A.-esque, addictive “Creative” (one of my favorite songs so far this year) to “You’ll Find A Way”, echoing early No Doubt (read: good No Doubt). The most impressive part out of all of this is she is talented at every type of music she tries. Of course any album as genre-spanning and ambitious as this is going to have a few weak spots. As versatile an album as it is, it is hard for it to feel coherent, it feels more like a mixtape than a planned out album. However, that isn’t to discredit the quality of the music, it just doesn’t flow very well at times. If you can get past that though, you’ll find 12 tracks running the gamut of indie music, and doing all of it superbly. Maybe Santogold should take on a Sufjan Stevens-esque project, but instead of doing states, she could do genres? What do you say Santi? You can thank me in your liner notes.

Watch out for this girl, because so far, no matter what facet of music she takes on, she conquers. So while Santogold may not be M.I.A., she is more.