Santigold

One Liner:  Very surprisingly enjoyable weirdo indie dance music that leans into rock sounds

Wikipedia Genre:  Electronic, new wave, indie, alt-pop, alternative dance

Home: Philadelphia

Poster Position: 9
Weekend Two Only.
Friday at 6:30.

Tito's Tent

Thoughts:  Santi White is her real name, which is interesting.  Her name is familiar because she works with Diplo and Major Lazer, who have been to the fest a number of times.  In addition, she has collaborated with the Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Kanye, A$AP Rocky, and others.  But I couldn't think of a song that I know that she sings.

After graduating from Wesleyan College she went to work for Epic Records in A&R.  She later left to become a producer and get to work on her own, and for a while was the lead singer of a punk band called Stiffed.  From listening for a few hours, she is really kind of a fascinating artist.  Very hard to pin down on who she is and what she does - one moment she sounds like M.I.A., then she'll sound like Siouxie and the Banshees, the next she sounds like Aimee Mann when she sang "Voices Carry."  And the songs go from rock to R&B to pop to stuff from around the world I can't identify.  In general, you won't find me looking for R&B to listen to, but I have really enjoyed this so far.

Her first album was 2008's Santigold (originally, like her stage name, it was called Santogold, but she got threatened with a lawsuit because of some dumb movie called Santo Gold's Blood Circus), which has this amazing image of her vomiting a huge glob of glitter on the cover.  But the opening song on that hit big with a lot of critics at the time and got her noticed.  "L.E.S. Artistes" has 60.9 million streams.

Like, that one kind of comes on like a Yeah Yeah Yeahs tune without the dissonance.  New wave and indie rock and her great voice all just piled into that simple guitar plucking and drum clicks.  Was #2 on Rolling Stone's end of year best singles list, and the disc was #6 on their albums of the year list.

Her second disc was 2012's Master of My Make-Believe, and it even featured Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the first single.  But the second song, "Disparate Youth" ended up being her top streamer overall even to this day.  180.5 million streams.

I wanted to start singing about high high hopes at the start of that one.  But this is another really cool vibe track - those drums put me right into a tight groove, and then the little reggae-ishness of that synth riff makes this one fonky.  I dig it.  Tough and danceable all at once.  Another critical success, she got to tour with the Chili Peppers before headlining her own tour.  She also got to appear as herself on an episode of The Office in here, which is funny.

Next was 2016's 99 Cents, which seems to have flown under the radar as far as stream counts.  IN 2018 she released a mixtape called I Don't Want: The Gold Fire Sessions, which also has pretty low streams throughout.  One song on there was featured in Euphoria, so it has a bigger count.  After a hiatus, she came back in 2022 with Spirituals.  Like others, it got rave reviews, but seems to have missed with the public.  Most songs are under a million and only one has more than two.  We'll check that one out.  "High Priestess" with 3.5 million.

Sounds like TV on the Radio at the start.  More of a chant/rap thing and less of a cohesive song than the other ones we've played.  Definitely not as interesting to me that a lot of these other songs I have been jamming.  Also only 1:17 long, which seems wrong.  No other releases since then, so maybe a 2024 album is in the works?

Very surprised, but I think this stuff is pretty dope!