Santigold’s latest album is a lockdown project created in an attempt to return to her normal self after the pandemic. Although it’s been 14 years since her genre-bending, self-titled debut was met with praise and awe, time hasn’t affected the singer-songwriter’s ability to create rich, textured pop that reverberates beyond the dancefloor.
Spirituals is short, only 10 songs, but it’s a winding journey through a landscape of loneliness, triumph and rage, inspired by African American folk song. On the opener My Horror, Santigold’s buoyant mezzo-soprano voice contrasts with the melancholy subject matter: “Look around and see they dead too.” Her existential ruminations continue on No Paradise, which departs from her usual electro-rock sonics and veers into Afrobeats with a sakara-style drumbeat. It’s a pictorially vivid track that is politically minded too: “Thieve, break, take. More power. Seize, lie, steal. More power.”
