In case you were wondering what the keyboardist from Geggy Tah is up to now, it’s producing this.
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Sally O’Rourke: “It’s called the American dream,” George Carlin said, “because you have to be asleep to believe it.” On “The Keepers,” Santigold takes this premise one step further. The American dream isn’t just absurd but dangerous, a solipsistic distraction from the real problems threatening to destroy the world. “Know what ails without will do you in,” she warns, while underneath the twinkly synths in the chorus lurks a harsh bass buzz. “The Keepers” isn’t a protest song, though, but a post-protest song. There’s no anger, only resignation; no solutions, only fear. The house is already on fire. Even if we wake up, all we can do is watch it burn.
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Jer Fairall: Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning” by way of the 21st century genre mashup, with enough of the former’s rueful melancholy held intact to retain the potency of the “while we sleep in America our house is burning down” chorus hook. That she remains such a drab vocalist is problematic, but when the music and the sentiment slow down enough to meet her at least halfway, the result is the closest to how I imagine she hears these songs in her head that I’ve heard from her yet.
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Anthony Easton: “Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usualto make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.” CP Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians. Music can become a kind of rhetoric. That rhetoric, even without words, can be constructed in such a way that it becomes boring. The assumption that having similar politics is enough means that the rhetoric has overwhelmed aesthetics. But being boring is a political and social gesture, and we might as well wait for the barbarians to come.
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Jonathan Bradley: “We sleep in America” and “our house is burning down” are striking bits of agit-prop and Santigold hasn’t lost her ability to make indie rock tunes shimmer like chart-toppers. Melodically, however, “The Keepers” is awfully slight. It’s the most affectless call-to-arms I’ve heard in a good while.
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Brad Shoup: Exquisite programming. Rote New Wave ennui.
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Katherine St Asaph: Santi White spoke at the EMP keynote this year, and all I took from her panel slot was how little she seemed to grasp how much of the music scene, in Brooklyn as anywhere else, is cliques boosting friends, as was her success in it. So it is with this song; the production’s as immaculate as any vaguely revivalist synthpop this year, perhaps more, but when I hear Deep Statements like “we’re the keepers, while we sleep in America,” I wonder who she’s including in that “we.” The glib singsong doesn’t help. Nor does the nagging thought that I’d really prefer the instrumental.
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Alfred Soto: From high-pitched keyboard to pitter-patter percussion to the stick-like-glue chorus, this is a beautiful track. Trembling and mumbling with anxiety, Santigold doesn’t know whether to celebrate or mourn the house burning down down.
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