Master of My Make-Believe by SANTIGOLD

Do you remember how we got excited about It’s Blitz in late 2008 for its ultimate release and resulting collective disappointment in March 2009? You know, ‘cos, basically it was just not very good.

It was around this time that Santogold changed her name to Santigold to avoid a law suit; she has released her debut album about a year prior and it was, y’know, really good.

Then she toured with Coldplay resulting in a collective “what the f–k?!?”.

Somehow, though things have come full cycle – starting off about a year ago, we first heard the co-lab with the aforementioned Yeah Yeah Yeah vocalist Karen O – which is now the opening track to the long-long awaited Santigold sophomore; the track in this new context has new life breathed into it – it’s exciting and anticipatory with it’s breakneck drums, echoed by ay-ay-ay-ay chants that are as tribal as they are militia.

Nick Zinner, in fact, co-writes over a third of this album with Santi White; and while producer John Hill pretty much co-wrote everything on her debut, he’s only involved on a couple of tracks here; the ever-so-slightly annoying Freak Like Me with it’s Minaj impersonation and the gloriously eighties pop-jungle-tight-fit of The Keepers.

TVOTR’s Dave Sitek gets amongst it too; a quasi-post-dubstep flourish lifts Fame into a stratosphere; while subtracted tropics descend and deconstruct around This Isn’t Our Parade to make it the hidden gem in the centre.

While Karen O only actually appears once on this record – it’s like the ghost of her lives on in many of the subsequent tracks; in a really good way.

Current single Disparate Youth is a triumph of a tune – everything a great pop song sound be; weird enough to capture attention; catchy enough to hold it – an electric guitar zap motif counterpoints Santi’s languid-paced croon – a mid-point double-time break fights against her lazy drawl to pure perfection. So. Freaking. Great.

Former Geggy Tah and one-half of The Bird and the Bee slips in with another gorgeous slowburner – The Riot’s Gone – where vocals and percussion combine in the latter half in something close to genius. A quasi-reggae swing is adopted in Pirate in the Water while something quite mental is discovered in Look At These Hoes. I love it.

- review by Andrew Tidball

7.9 / 10