Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 05/05/08
Label: Atlantic

If you're a hipster, the safest policy when faced with a new artist who is odd, awkward and tricky to classify is to call them a visionary. That way, if they sink without a trace you can argue that they were ahead of their time, but if they do somehow succeed you can argue that you were ahead of your time. Let's call it the M.I.A. policy.

This is presumably why Brooklyn's Santogold arrives on a tidal wave of frothy praise and adulation, as well as the backing of scenesters like Mark Ronson. And it's true that "L.E.S. Artistes" is an odd thing in an odd week, with its fidgety beat, half-rapped, half-drawled verses and a power chord chorus that echoes Sinead O'Connor's glorious "Mandinka". But something here never quite clicks, and the whole ends up less than the sum of the parts. Intriguing, perhaps, but hardly proof of a major new talent.

    by Jaime Gill