Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Carlos Santana [extended]

  • Santana [Columbia, 1969] C-
  • Abraxas [Columbia, 1970] C+
  • Santana III [Columbia, 1971] B
  • Caravanserai [Columbia, 1972] B-
  • Welcome [Columbia, 1973] B+
  • Love Devotion Surrender [Columbia, 1973] B-
  • Santana's Greatest Hits [Columbia, 1974] B-
  • Borboletta [Columbia, 1974] C+
  • Illuminations [Columbia, 1974] C-
  • Amigos [Columbia, 1976] B
  • Festival [Columbia, 1977] C+
  • Moonflower [Columbia, 1977] B+
  • Inner Secrets [Columbia, 1978] C+
  • Marathon [Columbia, 1979] C
  • Silver Dreams Golden Reality [Columbia, 1979] B-
  • Havana Moon [Columbia, 1983] B+
  • Supernatural [Arista, 1999] Choice Cuts
  • The Essential Santana [Columbia/Legacy, 2003]
  • Power of Peace [Legacy, 2017] ***

See Also:

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Santana: Santana [Columbia, 1969]
Just want to register my unreconstructed opposition to the methedrine school of American music. A lot of noise. C-

Santana: Abraxas [Columbia, 1970]
On the debut most of the originals were credited to "Santana Band"; this time individual members claim individual compositions. Can this mean somebody thought about these melodies (and lyrics!) before they sprung from the collective unconscious? In any case, they've improved. And in any case, the best ones are by Peter Green, Gabor Szabo, and Tito Puente, none of whom is known to be a member of the Santana Band. C+

Santana: Santana III [Columbia, 1971]
In theory, the polyrhythms intensified the momentum while the low-definition songwriting served the freeflow gestalt. In fact, the Latin lilt lightened the beat and the flow remained muddy indeed. So the electricity generated by the percussion-heavy opening cut comes as a pleasant surprise, and the movement of what follows is a surprising pleasure. New second guitarist Neal Schon deserves special thanks for crowding out Gregg Rolie's organ. Maybe soon he'll come up with more than one idea per solo. B

Santana: Caravanserai [Columbia, 1972]
Some of the slower electronic stuff fails to sustain my admittedly tentative interest, and the Gillette commercial vocals take this post-hippie business altogether too far. Still, I'm happy to report that the experiment--away from Latino schlock and toward Mahavishnu you can dance to, sort of--is not only honest but successful and not only successful but appropriate. After all, improvisation has always been their "thing." B-

Santana: Welcome [Columbia, 1973]
More confident and hence more fun than Caravanserai, this proves that a communion of multipercussive rock and transcendentalist jazz can move the unenlightened--me, for instance. Good themes, good playing, good beat, and let us not forget good singing--Leon Thomas's muscular spirituality grounds each side so firmly that not even Flora Purim can send it out the window. B+

Carlos Santana/Mahavishnu John McLaughlin: Love Devotion Surrender [Columbia, 1973]
On the back cover is a photograph of three men. Two of them are dressed in white and have their hands folded--one grinning like Alfred E. Neuman, the other looking like he's about to have a Supreme Court case named after him: solemn, his wrists ready for the cuffs. In between, a man in an orange ski jacket and red pants with one white sock seems to have caught his tongue on his lower lip. He looks like the yoga coach at a fashionable lunatic asylum. Guess which one is Sri Chinmoy. B-

Santana: Santana's Greatest Hits [Columbia, 1974]
The problem with their albums turns out to be too complex to be solved by eliminating uninteresting tunes--which is a backhanded compliment to the complexity of their concept. In any case, this compilation reduces their music to a cross between pan-African blooze and Latin-metal pop. The fine (and, er, not so fine) cuts it showcases work better in their original contexts--as heads, lynchpins, focal points of improvisations that are not (yet?) what they should be. B-

Santana: Borboletta [Columbia, 1974]
Old Santana fans beware. Ad copy to the contrary, the only Latin roots here flowered in Brazil long 'round '66. Airto Moreira isn't Sergio Mendes, I admit, but Leon Patillo isn't Leon Thomas either. C+

Devadip Carlos Santana/Turiya Alice Coltrane: Illuminations [Columbia, 1974]
Sri Chinmoy kicks this off with an om, which gives me the right to note that his om has nowhere near the punch and resonance of Allen Ginsberg's om. (If by "punch and resonance" I really mean "ego" I can only add "yay".) Then Carlos attempts once again to reproduce his own alpha waves on guitar and Mrs. Coltrane contributes background music barely worthy of "Kung Fu". C-

Santana: Amigos [Columbia, 1976]
Bill Graham and David Rubinson augment Sri Chinmoy's everybody's-everything strategy with direct-hit tactics as Carlos resumes his attack on the rock marketplace. Greg Walker doubles credibly as soul man and sonero, and "Dance Sister Dance" is the band's all-time hottest original even if it is lifted form a universal salsa riff. As Armando Peraza proves (on "Gitano"), better salsa conservatism than samba impressionism. And as Carlos proves, better salsa than Wes Montgomery at his schlockiest or a tune called "Europa" that lives up to its name. B

Santana: Festival [Columbia, 1977]
As a salsa band they're still OK, but a ten-tune format and the sincere desire for AM proselytization don't make them a pop band. (Putting vocals on all the tracks might help.) It makes them a mediocre fusion band. (Is there another kind?) C+

Santana: Moonflower [Columbia, 1977]
Mixing greatest oldies with lesser newcomers, salsa classics with rock covers, European concert hall with San Fran studio, this seamless double album should stand as the working definition of a world-class band. My objections stand, too--the improvisations sometimes divert when they should sustain, the groove is often too easy, and the vocal ensembles sound like commercials. But all these flaws, for better or worse, suit music of such global appeal. And Carlos Santana has never played so well for so long. In the rock guitar tradition he is less a man of style than of sound, a clear, loud, fluent sound that cleanses with the same motion no matter how often that motion is repeated--as long as the intensity and the context are there. On this album, the live cuts provide both. B+

Santana: Inner Secrets [Columbia, 1978]
It's sad when one of the few megagroups with a groove powerful enough to get it out of any jam resorts to hacks like Lambert and Potter for a hit. I mean, Santana is schlocky anyway. But Santana's own schlock has some dignity. C+

Santana: Marathon [Columbia, 1979]
In their selfless pursuit of universality they've signed on a second Eddie Money graduate and replaced Greg Walker, their finest vocalist, with a Scot named Alexander J. Ligertwood, who proves his internationalism by aping that eternal foreigner Lou Gramm. Odd, you can hardly hear the congas. C

Devadip Carlos Santana: Silver Dreams Golden Reality [Columbia, 1979]
Frustrating, especially for an earthbound churl like myself--spiritual program music that mixes genuinely celestial rock with the usual goop. The "title" song (which for some arcane reason--scansion, probably--substitutes the word "Smiles" for "Reality") is an altogether revolting string-fed banality. It's followed by an instrumental on which the guitarist attains his soaring apogee, and a Sri Chinmoy (!) tune--arranged by Narada Michael Walden (!!)--that achieves a natural impressionism Eno (!!!) couldn't hope for. See what I mean? B-

Havana Moon [Columbia, 1983]
Like Chuck Berry's, Santana's lexicon of licks has never guaranteed entertaining improvisation, and the square rhythms of his one-shot roots rock & roll & band (MG's and Thunderbirds converge on Muscle Shoals) flatter his guitar as aptly as any funkbeat. You'll still find solo atmospherics here, but at least this time they take after Booker T. rather than Sri C. And though the vocals go to damn near everybody but Carlos himself--Booker T., Kim Wilson, Carlos's dad, even Greg Walker, heretofore the finest singer ever to drop in on him--it's Willie Nelson who shows us what for, on a country tune that's the one cut on the album which completely transcends revivalism. B+

Santana: Supernatural [Arista, 1999]
"Put Your Lights On" Choice Cuts

Santana: The Essential Santana [Columbia/Legacy, 2003]
Columbia's Essential series dishonors a great packaging concept: two-CD best-of in single-size jewel box. Every title that isn't a priori redundant is either too long or, yes, too short; the second discs almost unfailingly home in on late schlock, especially misbegotten collaborations (hint: Willie Nelson's Hank Snow and Webb Pierce one-offs now occupy one budget disc). But the first disc here is long-winded enough to evoke a real Santana album but not so long-winded you won't give the next soundalike solo a shot, and so's its second disc--except for the dreadful patch in the middle featuring Scots belter Alex Ligertwood, a textbook example of how horribly wrong "rock" went in the AOR '80s. This clueless corporate greed, that clueless corporate greed--so different, yet so the same. [Recyclables]

The Isley Brothers/Santana: Power of Peace [Legacy, 2017]
Ronnie croons and cries the forebears' songbook while Carlos and Ernie soar-not-shred, and yes, consciousness is included ("Total Destruction to Your Mind," "God Bless the Child," "Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology]" ***