Santogold

Despite Santogold's bloggorific buzz, her eponymous debut, while diverse, is no revolution.

Santogold pours all that experience into a bracingly eclectic set full of fuzzy New Wave synths, sticky avant-soul melodies, busted-laptop beats and sing-song vocal chants inherited from the likes of Neneh Cherry and Björk. If you've managed to avoid her until now, you won't be able to for much longer.

The album is hardly flawless, but in an era that retro-fetishizes rock and whitewashed pop, Santogold feels both raw and real. [25 Apr/2 May 2008, p.119]

In spite of the infamy, however, she has delivered a remarkable and assured album.

Through all her riffs and rhythms Ms. White comes across as both a scrappy underdog and a girlish cheerleader for everyone who feels like one.

With her eponymous debut's deft mix of dap, punk, rock, pop, house, reggae, and hip-hop, she won't completely live down associations with the famous Sri Lankan (whom she also counts as a friend), but the result emerges as much more than a mere imitation.

Though at times it threatens to become overbearing in its eclecticism, Santogold's solid lyricism and pop sensibility keep the album from disappearing up its own ass.

Santogold bursts with the arrogance of a world-beating hip-hop debut while thriving on vulnerability.

This album is a place to crash, boots to wear, pepper spray to fight back with and charcoal to dirty your hands. If the struggles of urban artists sound like this, these 12 anthems ensure that starving will never go out of style.

White, a Wesleyan graduate, takes the best elements of punk, new wave, dub reggae and electronica and fuses them into an utterly arresting sonic pile-up different from anything else around.

Santogold might try to separate formula and art, but her album catches fire when she blasts that distinction into irrelevance.

Part of the appeal as with M.I.A.--is the attitude and defiant urban undertow that draw you in, and, while not immediately accessible, it's ultimately irresistible.

No Doubt-esque ska-pop forms the record's core, but her belting vocal hooks really come into their own on the robotic indie numbers.

Tunes-wise there’s some strength in depth here but it’s telling that, in spite of the lip service being paid to various left-of-centre influences, Santogold feels a strangely conservative listen, in danger of satisfying neither fans of M.I.A.’s wild stylistic forays nor the bubblegum masses thirsting after their latest dose of content-free self-assertion.

An eclectic album for Right Now, which shows what it means to be a modern pop star, and reveals a glittery crazy-paved path towards a brave new musical future.

White purveys prickly electro-pop that is disarmingly infectious, if you can get past her yap of a voice.

Ultimately, this is less a fully-formed debut than the tentative first few steps of a promising artist still finding her way.

An album frontloaded with highlights, and probably too self-consciously cool to charm the mainstream, even when the energy fades there's still enough diversity here for most people to find a favourite. [June 2008, p.146]

Santogold, then, is a great 21st century cut and paste pop record: self-conscious, referential and catchy as hell. Buy it, love it...then chuck it away and buy a newer model.

Combining new wave, ska, dub, grime, Baltimore club, and hip-hop in an ear-warping wash of 21st-century psychedelia, Santogold takes listeners on a trip to a hidden black America, where White acts as tour guide through the alleyways of her mind and undoubtedly excellent iPod.

White is undoubtedly talented, but neither she nor her record company seem to know what to do with her. [July 2008, p.100]

Santogold is sure to be one of the year’s best albums, with only one near-miss (“My Superman”), an album that may become unavoidable in coming weeks and months.

The whole record's buzzy, hat-wearingly trendy; but also irresistible, and almost boundlessly exciting. [July 2008, p.104]

Santogold ultimately sounds like her own damn movement.

Variously hailed as the future of pop music, the next M.I.A., and the culmination of punk, New Wave, and electronic pop, the most remarkable aspect of Santogold’s debut is how ordinary most of it is. [Summer 2008]