It’s been almost four years since Santi White, aka Santogold, aka Santigold, released her ludicrously well-received debut. In the interim she’s lived her own version of the ‘difficult second album’ fairytale, changing her name, manager and label along the way to arrive at a place where she’s indisputably her own boss.
It’s hardly surprising then that her second album deals with the push ‘n’ pull between finding her feet and shitting herself at the prospect of doing so. Super-producers Diplo and Switch handheld White through her first album: this time she’s calling the shots.
The result is a characteristically sparky, busy and sexy album that channels new wave, punk and hip hop into something intensely danceable, personal and addictive – even if it never quite matches the raw power of her debut.
That album was so rough ‘n’ ready you had to blow sawdust off it before giving it a listen: with this much-slicker effort we simply pull back, release and watch it rip.
Master of Make Believe is front-loaded with the singles ‘Go!’ and ‘Disparate Youth’ – the former a military marching band-meets-The Go Gos party starter (featuring White’s bud Karen O) and the latter a languid, searching heartbreaker of a song.
From the start, Santigold’s trademark brash/sensitive self is powerfully in evidence. It’s that kind of album – no horses spared, no brakes.
And while some of the nine tracks that follow can’t compare to this opening barrage (‘Pirate In The Water’’s dancehall piano stabs and ‘Fame’’s gimmicky samples have yet to woo me), there are more than enough belters (speed hip-hop ‘Look At These Holes’, ‘LES Artistes’-style torch song ‘The Riot’s Gone’, dagnasty grinder ‘Freak Like Me’) to blow even the most sceptical listener away.
Big, dirty, greasy breakfast-roll beats have always been Santigold’s thing, and ‘Master Of My Make-Believe’ is a masterclass of rhythm. Closing blow-out ‘Big Mouth’, which seems less ludicrous in this context than it did as a single, features enough clatter to curdle milk beside your speakers.
Volume, density and bass make this quite a head-spinning record, so let’s clear it up now.
Master Of My Make-Believe is not a pop re-tooling or a tortured second album. It’s not a re-tread or a sell-out or a flop. It’s the music of a woman in charge – abrasively eccentric, overpoweringly sexy and mad as a bag of hammers. A;; of which add up to make it essential listening.