The best thing about Keyboard City is definitely the album packaging. The album itself doesn’t suck – it’s just that the creativity harnessed in the design that surrounds the disc would’ve greatly benefited a handful of the tracks on that disc.
Salvador Santana’s latest album carries good vibes, but really misses the target at times. At it’s best it is a charismatic, funky keyboard scene that can rock some (admittedly easy-to-rock) socks. But time and time again it’s hindered by tracks that play down to the masses rather than going on its own. Keyboard City ends up lacking the teeth for its attempted bite.
Santana (yes, his father is the legendary Carlos) clings onto a basic funk pathos throughout most of his album, which presents both benefits and problems.
To his credit, Santana’s got a keen sense for funk and a steady relationship with his keys. Yet there’s a feeling throughout Keyboard City that his insistence to stick with straight up funk is hindering him.
At points he’ll try some pretty interesting instrumentation, but it’s as if he’s pretending he doesn’t know what to do with it so that other songs will sound better later on. Songs like “Get Silly” will present some awfully interesting opportunities for a new perspective on funk, but he gives up too easy and they become either boring, confusing, or just outright irritating.
The biggest problems on Keyboard City are definitely the third through sixth tracks. Ironically, it’s usually the keyboard doesn’t do it on this part of the album. “Don’t Even Care” is almost novel in its approach to Latin rock, and the whining keyboard makes it feel almost as if the song were a satire. The equally irritating “Under the Sun” feels overly pop-fueled when it starts out with spastic and simple keyboard tracks.
After these follows “Video Game Save My Life,” which doesn’t really deserve to be grouped with the two before it because of its genuine attempt for uniqueness, but all the same isn’t the caliber of the tracks that came before or after the quartet of lame in the near-beginning of the album.
However, it’s not the keyboard that ruins the fourth (and most ruined) track on Keyboard City. It’s the evil and untrustworthy powers of Auto-Tune.
In my world, Auto-Tune would be punished as Spanish Heresy was in the 15th Century. The mecha-skank manages to take the title track’s ingenuity and turn it into a four-and-a-half-minute-long gimmick that will become dated instantly.
No matter how much a certain top hat-wearing stripper-lover swears by it, Auto-Tune sounds like someone gurgling a small space heater in their throat, and it simply tears a hole in what would be a much better song than the three before it.
Now that I’ve got those complaints off of my chest, I will say that I’ve been harsh on the album in some senses. While there’s not much redeemable about the bad four tracks, and most of the ones after them are listenable at best, there’s some stuff that’s worth your ear’s time.
After the title track, Keyboard City matures immensely, but also inconsistently. Songs like “This Day (Belongs To You)” and “Keep Smiling” are feel-good on the edge of feel-cliché, but the tracks “Don’t Do It” and “We Got Somethin’ ” redeem the album in a big badass way.
The problem is, Salvador’s well-grounded funk roots and gift for ingenuity shouldn’t have to be redeemed. This album wouldn’t have to recover from itself if Salvador could just get his shit together and make some slightly more funky music. There’s some great stuff on this album, but it’s struggling for control with stuff that’s just plain annoying.
