Albums : St. Vincent : St. Vincent
Albums : St. Vincent : St. Vincent
Listen To St. Vincent : St. Vincent
Who Is St. Vincent?
Annie Erin Clark (born September 28, 1982), better known by her stage name St. Vincent, is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She began her music career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree and was also part of Sufjan Stevens' touring band before forming her own band in 2006. Clark currently resides in Manhattan.
Her debut album was Marry Me, and was followed by Actor (2009). Her third album, Strange Mercy, was released on September 13, 2011. On September 10, 2012, she released a collaborative album with David Byrne titled Love This Giant.
Clark has opened shows for such acts as Television, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, Jolie Holland, John Vanderslice, Xiu Xiu, Death Cab for Cutie, Cristina Donà and Grizzly Bear. She worked with Bon Iver on the song "Roslyn", which appeared on the film soundtrack of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Her track "The Strangers" was sampled by Kid Cudi on the song "MANIAC" for his album Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager along with rapper Cage.
Annie Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She began playing the guitar at the age of 12 and, as a teenager, worked as the tour manager for her uncle's band Tuck & Patti. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Lake Highlands High School, where she participated in theater and the school's jazz band, and was a classmate of Mark Salling (who later went on to star in the series Glee). Clark graduated from Lake Highlands in 2001.
Clark attended the Berklee College of Music for three years before dropping out. In retrospect, Clark said, "I think that with music school and art school, or school in any form, there has to be some system of grading and measurement. The things they can teach you are quantifiable. While all that is good and has its place, at some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music." In 2003, during her time at Berklee, she released an EP with fellow students entitled Ratsliveonnoevilstar. While in Berklee, she worked with Heavy Rotation Records where "she revealed a much more private and intimate rendering of 'Count' for Dorm Sessions Vol. 1." Shortly after leaving Berklee, Clark returned home to Texas where she joined The Polyphonic Spree just before their embarking on a European tour. In 2004 she joined Glenn Branca's 100 guitar orchestra for the Queens performance.
Clark left The Polyphonic Spree and joined Sufjan Stevens' touring band in 2006, bringing with her a tour EP entitled Paris is Burning. It contains three tracks, including a cover version of Jackson Browne's "These Days".
In 2006, Clark began recording a studio album, under the stage name St. Vincent. Her stage name is a reference to Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953. “It’s the place where poetry comes to die,” she has said. “That’s me.” The name is also a reference to her great-grandmother, whose middle name was St. Vincent. In an interview on The Colbert Report, she said that she "took her moniker from a Nick Cave song, which references the hospital where Dylan Thomas died." The reference is to the line "And Dylan Thomas died drunk in / St. Vincent's hospital" from Cave's song "There She Goes my Beautiful World" off the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
Clark released her debut album, Marry Me on July 10, 2007 on Beggars Banquet Records. Named after a line from the television show Arrested Development, the album features appearances from drummer Brian Teasley (Man or Astro-man?, The Polyphonic Spree), Mike Garson (David Bowie's longtime pianist), and horn player Louis Schwadron (The Polyphonic Spree).
The album was well received by critics, with Clark being compared to the likes of Kate Bush and David Bowie. Clark was lauded for the album's musical arrangements as well as themes and style; in their review of the album, The AV Club noted: "There's a point where too much happiness turns into madness, and St. Vincent's multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark knows this place well". Pitchfork said "at every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life."
The songs featured on Marry Me were largely written when Clark was eighteen and nineteen years old, and, according to Clark, "represented a more idealized version of what life was or what love was or anything in the eyes of someone who hadn't really experienced anything." The album featured its one single, "Paris Is Burning", as well as a music video for "Jesus Saves, I Spend".
In 2008, Clark was nominated for three PLUG Independent Music Awards: New Artist of the Year, Female Artist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year. On March 6, 2008, she won the PLUG Female Artist of the Year award.
In 2008, after returning to New York from a lengthy tour, Clark began working on her second album. Her inspiration reportedly came from several films, including Disney movies: "Well, the truth is that I had come back from a pretty long — you know, about a year-and-a-half of touring, and so my brain was sort of all circuit boards that were a little bit fried", Clark said. "So I started watching films as sort of a way to get back into being human. And then it started to just really inform the entire record."
Clark, who didn't have a studio at the time, began writing the album in her apartment on her computer using GarageBand and MIDI, because she had been getting noise complaints from neighbors. The songs were largely inspired by scenes from various children's films; Clark has stated that she would imagine a soundtrack for certain scenes from films when constructing the music and lyrics, including scenes from Snow White (1937) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
The second album, entitled Actor, was released by 4AD Records on May 5, 2009. The album was also well received and gained more commercial attention than its predecessor. Spin gave the album eight out of ten stars, noting its "juxtaposition of the cruel and the kind, and here, the baroque arrangements are even more complex and her voice even prettier, with both only underlining the dark currents running through her songs". Entertainment Weekly said the album "plays up the contrasts, with Clark letting her church-choir voice linger on lyrics that hint darkly at themes of violence, sex, and general chaos", and branded the album "a uniquely potent cocktail of sounds and moods."
Actor charted well for an independent release, peaking at #9 on Billboard's Independent Albums Chart, and #5 on the Tastemaker Albums Chart. It peaked at #90 on the Billboard 200. Although the album spawned no singles (except in the UK where "Actor Out Of Work" was issued as a 7" vinyl single), music videos for "Marrow" and "Actor Out of Work" were released, and aired on several music channels. A promotional music video for Laughing With a Mouth of Blood, featuring Portlandia's Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (then of ThunderAnt), was also filmed.
On January 12, 2011—according to her Twitter account— Clark stated that she was working on her third album, Strange Mercy, a follow up to Actor. In early March, producer John Congleton, who also worked with Clark on Actor, commented that he and Clark were nearly a third of the way through recording the new release. On July 4, Clark stated via Twitter that if enough followers tweeted the hashtag "#strangemercy", she would release a track from the album. On July 22, after the threshold was met, she released "Surgeon" for download and streaming on her official website.
In August 2011, Clark was interviewed and featured on the cover of SPIN magazine. On August 24, 2011, a music video was released for the song "Cruel", and on September 5, the entire album was put up for streaming on NPR Music. On August 25, 2011, debuted Strange Mercy in the Temple of Dendur room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, introducing Toko Yasuda (ex-Enon), Matt Johnson, and Daniel Mintseris to her live band. The album was released on September 13, 2011.
Strange Mercy received widespread acclaim from music critics. The album achieved an overall rating of 8.1/10 at AnyDecentMusic? based on 36 reviews. The album was St. Vincent's highest-charting album yet, peaking at #19 on the US Billboard 200. Regarding the album Annie Clark has stated "I don't think it's the best record I'll ever make, but I think it's a good record." Clark began touring the US and Europe in support of the record in the fall of 2011, and is continuing a worldwide tour throughout 2012.
On November 18, 2013, Clark announced dates for a European tour in 2014 via her website. The following day, Republic Records announced that Clark had signed to their label. Her fourth album, St. Vincent, is scheduled to be released on February 25, 2014. On December 9, Clark released the album's first single, "Birth in Reverse", for digital streaming. The second single, "Digital Witness" was released for digital streaming on January 6.
In 2012, Clark featured on Andrew Bird's album Break It Yourself singing on "Lusitania". On June 14, 2012, "Who", the first single from her collaboration with David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, was released. The single comes from their album Love This Giant, which was released on September 11, 2012. On September 18, 2012, Clark participated in the "30 Songs / 30 Days" campaign to support Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a multi-platform media project inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s best-selling book. Clark also provided guest vocals for the song "What's the Use of Won'drin'" on the album Who Killed Amanda Palmer from Amanda Palmer, formerly of The Dresden Dolls. Clark appeared on the film soundtrack of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. On May 28, 2013, David Byrne and St. Vincent released Brass Tactics, which includes a previously unreleased Love This Giant bonus track, two remixes, and two live tracks. St. Vincent was the 2013 recipient of the Smithsonian magazine American Ingenuity Awards in Performing Arts.
Clark's vocals will be featured on Swans' upcoming album To Be Kind, which will be released on May 13, 2014.
Clark's music has been noted for its wide array of instruments and complex arrangements, as well as its polysemous lyrics, which have been described as teetering between "happiness and madness". In response to this, Clark has said, "I like when things come out of nowhere and blindside you a little bit. I think any person who gets panic attacks or has an anxiety disorder can understand how things can all of a sudden turn very quickly. I think I'm sublimating that into the music."
In addition to guitar, Clark also plays bass, piano, organ and theremin. Her music also often features violins, cellos, flutes, trumpets, clarinets and other instruments. Her unorthodox musical style has been characterized by critics as a mixture of chamber rock, pop, indie rock, and cabaret jazz.
As of late 2011, her electric guitar pedal board included the following: Korg PitchBlack, DBA Interstellar Overdriver Supreme, ZVex Mastotron Fuzz, Eventide Pitchfactor, Eventide Space, BOSS PS-5 Super Shifter, Moog EP-2 Expression Pedal. All her pedals are controlled by a MasterMind MIDI Foot Controller. She frequently plays a 1967 Harmony H17 Bobkat electric guitar.
St. Vincent Review
St. Vincent has long been a big deal to a small population. Her last solo album, 2011’s Strange Mercy, was heralded album of the year by numerous publications, including this one, and yet at Coachella 2012, she was still stuck inside the Gobi tent playing at the same time as Jeff Mangum and The Shins, leaving one to scratch one’s head and wonder what a lady has to do to be a big deal to more people.
Make a record with David Byrne? Okay, Annie Clark (St. Vincent’s Clark Kent) did that, which really just added to the resume of iconic songwriters she’s worked with, which already boasted Andrew Bird, John Darnielle, Matt Berninger, Justin Vernon, and Sufjan Stevens. But St. Vincent was allowed to play before bigger audiences via the Byrne collaboration than her own project had ever managed, and undoubtably earned a whole new fanbase of Talking Heads faithful that were introduced to her through Love This Giant.
Her self-titled fourth LP seeks to continue this upward momentum, and she has savvily turned to major label imprint Loma Vista to help get more ears on it. More importantly, Clark has risen to the challenge on all levels, crafting a compact and focused album with more pop sensibility than any of her previous releases. While she has penned repeatable gems in the past (like “Actor Out of Work” and “Cruel”), St. Vincent features a consistent parade of tracks that will be comfortable with new heights of popularity. “Rattlesnake” and “Birth in Reverse” could almost be considered fun if not for Clark’s lyrical emphasis, her words so vivid that they render her songs nearly impossible to reconcile away from them. The DFA-indebted electronics on the opener are a reminder that you can’t just tune out St. Vincent’s words and dance. But that’s okay — that’s how we like her.
But do we really know her? Clark’s ascent to popularity hasn’t happened because of a crystal clear understanding of who she is or what she is trying to say. It’s more that we like that she’s trying to express herself, that although she can be hard to understand, she doesn’t stop trying to connect. There is no shortage of interviews with her, yet it was Annie Clark teaching a soccer trick that maybe most captivated sections of her audience. And now, with her self-titled album, we’re probably learning more about what is going on in Clark’s mind than ever before, yet the mystery only increases.
“Severed Crossed Fingers”, the album’s crescendo and most affecting number, contains the line “The truth is ugly, and I feel ugly, too,” sung in a clarity that is rare for a St. Vincent album. You remember how powerfully and beautifully she can sing during this track, and yet you also realize why she keeps this hidden most of the time. The song plays on the organic versus the mechanical, with guts and gears coexisting, technology and humanity finding a way to cohabitate. With all the ways technology takes away from the human experience of old, it never obscures humanity in St. Vincent’s songs. Nothing can. Still her “heart is pulled from her chest,” and still it “changed the words that I knew best.”
The aesthetic of the album, crunchier, fuzzier, more jagged and dangerous, is a tool to further veil the feelings, and on “Birth in Reverse”, it can be viewed as a deliberate distraction. And what isn’t? “I Prefer Your Love” finds her declaring her emotional, very real response to a human being as greater than another tool for obscuring ourselves: religion. “Bring Me Your Loves” is Clark at her most menacing, directly displaying a darker kind of love, the kind that pushes harder than it should, that doesn’t treat the partner like an equal. This time it is her overzealous longing that buffers. Both “Rattlesnake” and “Psychopath” find Clark challenging the notion of crazy for her very normal, very human responses to her environment and interactions.
While emotional unavailability is pervasive here, even when she wants “all of your loves” on “Bring Me Your Loves” or “all of your mind” on “Digital Witness”, that latter song explains the album’s central theme: “If I can’t show it, you can’t see it; what’s the point of doing anything at all? This is not time for confessing.”
So, is St. Vincent going to give up trying to relate to the world? No, of course not, even when it seems pointless. She is doing the opposite, in fact, as she tries to reach more people with stronger songwriting and more legible sentiments. On an album where it is easier than ever to know what is going on in her songs, St. Vincent manages to keep her emotional debt still mostly submerged. “A smile is more than showing teeth,” she argues on “Every Tear Disappears”.
Also to blame for the mystery of St. Vincent is the 21st century, her own damaged psyche, computers, mysticism, and anything else that gets in the way of our relationships and our happiness. And though the lyrics seem to come from a fed-up point of frustration, the key to St. Vincent is that she overcomes the futility of relating to others. She still makes music seeking desperately to be understood and appreciated. Still she loves, and hurts, and laughs, and cries. She never checks out when it is so tempting. On “Rattlesnake”, it makes her feel like the last person on earth. By “Severed Crossed Fingers”, someone has found her, and it makes her realize she will never be alone. What happens in between is the fight, which sonically St. Vincent has always nailed, and here she works wonders, writing with gloss and generosity. Her biggest fans may prefer less direct writing, but it makes St. Vincent her most widely appealing album to date, an infectious work that doesn’t ever feel like a compromise.
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Listen To St. Vincent : St. Vincent
Who Is St. Vincent?
Annie Erin Clark (born September 28, 1982), better known by her stage name St. Vincent, is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She began her music career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree and was also part of Sufjan Stevens' touring band before forming her own band in 2006. Clark currently resides in Manhattan.
Her debut album was Marry Me, and was followed by Actor (2009). Her third album, Strange Mercy, was released on September 13, 2011. On September 10, 2012, she released a collaborative album with David Byrne titled Love This Giant.
Clark has opened shows for such acts as Television, Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, Jolie Holland, John Vanderslice, Xiu Xiu, Death Cab for Cutie, Cristina Donà and Grizzly Bear. She worked with Bon Iver on the song "Roslyn", which appeared on the film soundtrack of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Her track "The Strangers" was sampled by Kid Cudi on the song "MANIAC" for his album Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager along with rapper Cage.
Annie Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She began playing the guitar at the age of 12 and, as a teenager, worked as the tour manager for her uncle's band Tuck & Patti. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Lake Highlands High School, where she participated in theater and the school's jazz band, and was a classmate of Mark Salling (who later went on to star in the series Glee). Clark graduated from Lake Highlands in 2001.
Clark attended the Berklee College of Music for three years before dropping out. In retrospect, Clark said, "I think that with music school and art school, or school in any form, there has to be some system of grading and measurement. The things they can teach you are quantifiable. While all that is good and has its place, at some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music." In 2003, during her time at Berklee, she released an EP with fellow students entitled Ratsliveonnoevilstar. While in Berklee, she worked with Heavy Rotation Records where "she revealed a much more private and intimate rendering of 'Count' for Dorm Sessions Vol. 1." Shortly after leaving Berklee, Clark returned home to Texas where she joined The Polyphonic Spree just before their embarking on a European tour. In 2004 she joined Glenn Branca's 100 guitar orchestra for the Queens performance.
Clark left The Polyphonic Spree and joined Sufjan Stevens' touring band in 2006, bringing with her a tour EP entitled Paris is Burning. It contains three tracks, including a cover version of Jackson Browne's "These Days".
In 2006, Clark began recording a studio album, under the stage name St. Vincent. Her stage name is a reference to Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953. “It’s the place where poetry comes to die,” she has said. “That’s me.” The name is also a reference to her great-grandmother, whose middle name was St. Vincent. In an interview on The Colbert Report, she said that she "took her moniker from a Nick Cave song, which references the hospital where Dylan Thomas died." The reference is to the line "And Dylan Thomas died drunk in / St. Vincent's hospital" from Cave's song "There She Goes my Beautiful World" off the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
Clark released her debut album, Marry Me on July 10, 2007 on Beggars Banquet Records. Named after a line from the television show Arrested Development, the album features appearances from drummer Brian Teasley (Man or Astro-man?, The Polyphonic Spree), Mike Garson (David Bowie's longtime pianist), and horn player Louis Schwadron (The Polyphonic Spree).
The album was well received by critics, with Clark being compared to the likes of Kate Bush and David Bowie. Clark was lauded for the album's musical arrangements as well as themes and style; in their review of the album, The AV Club noted: "There's a point where too much happiness turns into madness, and St. Vincent's multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark knows this place well". Pitchfork said "at every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life."
The songs featured on Marry Me were largely written when Clark was eighteen and nineteen years old, and, according to Clark, "represented a more idealized version of what life was or what love was or anything in the eyes of someone who hadn't really experienced anything." The album featured its one single, "Paris Is Burning", as well as a music video for "Jesus Saves, I Spend".
In 2008, Clark was nominated for three PLUG Independent Music Awards: New Artist of the Year, Female Artist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year. On March 6, 2008, she won the PLUG Female Artist of the Year award.
In 2008, after returning to New York from a lengthy tour, Clark began working on her second album. Her inspiration reportedly came from several films, including Disney movies: "Well, the truth is that I had come back from a pretty long — you know, about a year-and-a-half of touring, and so my brain was sort of all circuit boards that were a little bit fried", Clark said. "So I started watching films as sort of a way to get back into being human. And then it started to just really inform the entire record."
Clark, who didn't have a studio at the time, began writing the album in her apartment on her computer using GarageBand and MIDI, because she had been getting noise complaints from neighbors. The songs were largely inspired by scenes from various children's films; Clark has stated that she would imagine a soundtrack for certain scenes from films when constructing the music and lyrics, including scenes from Snow White (1937) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
The second album, entitled Actor, was released by 4AD Records on May 5, 2009. The album was also well received and gained more commercial attention than its predecessor. Spin gave the album eight out of ten stars, noting its "juxtaposition of the cruel and the kind, and here, the baroque arrangements are even more complex and her voice even prettier, with both only underlining the dark currents running through her songs". Entertainment Weekly said the album "plays up the contrasts, with Clark letting her church-choir voice linger on lyrics that hint darkly at themes of violence, sex, and general chaos", and branded the album "a uniquely potent cocktail of sounds and moods."
Actor charted well for an independent release, peaking at #9 on Billboard's Independent Albums Chart, and #5 on the Tastemaker Albums Chart. It peaked at #90 on the Billboard 200. Although the album spawned no singles (except in the UK where "Actor Out Of Work" was issued as a 7" vinyl single), music videos for "Marrow" and "Actor Out of Work" were released, and aired on several music channels. A promotional music video for Laughing With a Mouth of Blood, featuring Portlandia's Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (then of ThunderAnt), was also filmed.
On January 12, 2011—according to her Twitter account— Clark stated that she was working on her third album, Strange Mercy, a follow up to Actor. In early March, producer John Congleton, who also worked with Clark on Actor, commented that he and Clark were nearly a third of the way through recording the new release. On July 4, Clark stated via Twitter that if enough followers tweeted the hashtag "#strangemercy", she would release a track from the album. On July 22, after the threshold was met, she released "Surgeon" for download and streaming on her official website.
In August 2011, Clark was interviewed and featured on the cover of SPIN magazine. On August 24, 2011, a music video was released for the song "Cruel", and on September 5, the entire album was put up for streaming on NPR Music. On August 25, 2011, debuted Strange Mercy in the Temple of Dendur room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, introducing Toko Yasuda (ex-Enon), Matt Johnson, and Daniel Mintseris to her live band. The album was released on September 13, 2011.
Strange Mercy received widespread acclaim from music critics. The album achieved an overall rating of 8.1/10 at AnyDecentMusic? based on 36 reviews. The album was St. Vincent's highest-charting album yet, peaking at #19 on the US Billboard 200. Regarding the album Annie Clark has stated "I don't think it's the best record I'll ever make, but I think it's a good record." Clark began touring the US and Europe in support of the record in the fall of 2011, and is continuing a worldwide tour throughout 2012.
On November 18, 2013, Clark announced dates for a European tour in 2014 via her website. The following day, Republic Records announced that Clark had signed to their label. Her fourth album, St. Vincent, is scheduled to be released on February 25, 2014. On December 9, Clark released the album's first single, "Birth in Reverse", for digital streaming. The second single, "Digital Witness" was released for digital streaming on January 6.
In 2012, Clark featured on Andrew Bird's album Break It Yourself singing on "Lusitania". On June 14, 2012, "Who", the first single from her collaboration with David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, was released. The single comes from their album Love This Giant, which was released on September 11, 2012. On September 18, 2012, Clark participated in the "30 Songs / 30 Days" campaign to support Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a multi-platform media project inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s best-selling book. Clark also provided guest vocals for the song "What's the Use of Won'drin'" on the album Who Killed Amanda Palmer from Amanda Palmer, formerly of The Dresden Dolls. Clark appeared on the film soundtrack of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. On May 28, 2013, David Byrne and St. Vincent released Brass Tactics, which includes a previously unreleased Love This Giant bonus track, two remixes, and two live tracks. St. Vincent was the 2013 recipient of the Smithsonian magazine American Ingenuity Awards in Performing Arts.
Clark's vocals will be featured on Swans' upcoming album To Be Kind, which will be released on May 13, 2014.
Clark's music has been noted for its wide array of instruments and complex arrangements, as well as its polysemous lyrics, which have been described as teetering between "happiness and madness". In response to this, Clark has said, "I like when things come out of nowhere and blindside you a little bit. I think any person who gets panic attacks or has an anxiety disorder can understand how things can all of a sudden turn very quickly. I think I'm sublimating that into the music."
In addition to guitar, Clark also plays bass, piano, organ and theremin. Her music also often features violins, cellos, flutes, trumpets, clarinets and other instruments. Her unorthodox musical style has been characterized by critics as a mixture of chamber rock, pop, indie rock, and cabaret jazz.
As of late 2011, her electric guitar pedal board included the following: Korg PitchBlack, DBA Interstellar Overdriver Supreme, ZVex Mastotron Fuzz, Eventide Pitchfactor, Eventide Space, BOSS PS-5 Super Shifter, Moog EP-2 Expression Pedal. All her pedals are controlled by a MasterMind MIDI Foot Controller. She frequently plays a 1967 Harmony H17 Bobkat electric guitar.
St. Vincent Review
St. Vincent has long been a big deal to a small population. Her last solo album, 2011’s Strange Mercy, was heralded album of the year by numerous publications, including this one, and yet at Coachella 2012, she was still stuck inside the Gobi tent playing at the same time as Jeff Mangum and The Shins, leaving one to scratch one’s head and wonder what a lady has to do to be a big deal to more people.
Make a record with David Byrne? Okay, Annie Clark (St. Vincent’s Clark Kent) did that, which really just added to the resume of iconic songwriters she’s worked with, which already boasted Andrew Bird, John Darnielle, Matt Berninger, Justin Vernon, and Sufjan Stevens. But St. Vincent was allowed to play before bigger audiences via the Byrne collaboration than her own project had ever managed, and undoubtably earned a whole new fanbase of Talking Heads faithful that were introduced to her through Love This Giant.
Her self-titled fourth LP seeks to continue this upward momentum, and she has savvily turned to major label imprint Loma Vista to help get more ears on it. More importantly, Clark has risen to the challenge on all levels, crafting a compact and focused album with more pop sensibility than any of her previous releases. While she has penned repeatable gems in the past (like “Actor Out of Work” and “Cruel”), St. Vincent features a consistent parade of tracks that will be comfortable with new heights of popularity. “Rattlesnake” and “Birth in Reverse” could almost be considered fun if not for Clark’s lyrical emphasis, her words so vivid that they render her songs nearly impossible to reconcile away from them. The DFA-indebted electronics on the opener are a reminder that you can’t just tune out St. Vincent’s words and dance. But that’s okay — that’s how we like her.
But do we really know her? Clark’s ascent to popularity hasn’t happened because of a crystal clear understanding of who she is or what she is trying to say. It’s more that we like that she’s trying to express herself, that although she can be hard to understand, she doesn’t stop trying to connect. There is no shortage of interviews with her, yet it was Annie Clark teaching a soccer trick that maybe most captivated sections of her audience. And now, with her self-titled album, we’re probably learning more about what is going on in Clark’s mind than ever before, yet the mystery only increases.
“Severed Crossed Fingers”, the album’s crescendo and most affecting number, contains the line “The truth is ugly, and I feel ugly, too,” sung in a clarity that is rare for a St. Vincent album. You remember how powerfully and beautifully she can sing during this track, and yet you also realize why she keeps this hidden most of the time. The song plays on the organic versus the mechanical, with guts and gears coexisting, technology and humanity finding a way to cohabitate. With all the ways technology takes away from the human experience of old, it never obscures humanity in St. Vincent’s songs. Nothing can. Still her “heart is pulled from her chest,” and still it “changed the words that I knew best.”
The aesthetic of the album, crunchier, fuzzier, more jagged and dangerous, is a tool to further veil the feelings, and on “Birth in Reverse”, it can be viewed as a deliberate distraction. And what isn’t? “I Prefer Your Love” finds her declaring her emotional, very real response to a human being as greater than another tool for obscuring ourselves: religion. “Bring Me Your Loves” is Clark at her most menacing, directly displaying a darker kind of love, the kind that pushes harder than it should, that doesn’t treat the partner like an equal. This time it is her overzealous longing that buffers. Both “Rattlesnake” and “Psychopath” find Clark challenging the notion of crazy for her very normal, very human responses to her environment and interactions.
While emotional unavailability is pervasive here, even when she wants “all of your loves” on “Bring Me Your Loves” or “all of your mind” on “Digital Witness”, that latter song explains the album’s central theme: “If I can’t show it, you can’t see it; what’s the point of doing anything at all? This is not time for confessing.”
So, is St. Vincent going to give up trying to relate to the world? No, of course not, even when it seems pointless. She is doing the opposite, in fact, as she tries to reach more people with stronger songwriting and more legible sentiments. On an album where it is easier than ever to know what is going on in her songs, St. Vincent manages to keep her emotional debt still mostly submerged. “A smile is more than showing teeth,” she argues on “Every Tear Disappears”.
Also to blame for the mystery of St. Vincent is the 21st century, her own damaged psyche, computers, mysticism, and anything else that gets in the way of our relationships and our happiness. And though the lyrics seem to come from a fed-up point of frustration, the key to St. Vincent is that she overcomes the futility of relating to others. She still makes music seeking desperately to be understood and appreciated. Still she loves, and hurts, and laughs, and cries. She never checks out when it is so tempting. On “Rattlesnake”, it makes her feel like the last person on earth. By “Severed Crossed Fingers”, someone has found her, and it makes her realize she will never be alone. What happens in between is the fight, which sonically St. Vincent has always nailed, and here she works wonders, writing with gloss and generosity. Her biggest fans may prefer less direct writing, but it makes St. Vincent her most widely appealing album to date, an infectious work that doesn’t ever feel like a compromise.
Contact St. Vincent
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | GM | US Press | World Booking | Canada Booking | Europe Booking
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