Salvador Santana’s ‘Keyboard City’ has bright spots, but mostly annoying

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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.