For almost 20 years, St. Vincent – aka Oklahoman art-popper Annie Clark – has loved a present for shapeshifting which may remind you of one other musical innovator. First she was the “asexual Pollyanna”, as she’s dubbed her first incarnation, earlier than she mined ‘90s alt-rock for 2011’s ‘Unusual Mercy’ and later entered what she’s referred to as her “latex period”. The cosplay led to delicate controversy when she adopted the look of Andy Warhol’s transgender muse Sweet Darling for her final mission, the ‘70s rock-inspired ‘Daddy’s Dwelling’.
And now? “Normally on this document,” Clark informed NME earlier this 12 months, “there’s no character – it’s simply me. It’s simply the sound of the within of my head.” Her seventh solo album is bracingly darkish and aggressive, its uncompromising nature linked to the truth that it’s her first self-produced document (although she has at all times co-produced her work). Opener ‘Hell Is Close to’ signifies St. Vincent’s style for misdirection, since its ethereal and wistful tone provides strategy to a volley tracks that commerce in pulverising beats, corrosive blasts of noise-rock guitar and lyrics that drip with disdain. “I take a look at you and all I see is meat,” she sneers on the swaggering ‘Flea’.
For all her protestations that she’s eschewed characters, the music sees her inhabit its titular creature, who represents loss of life, which is writ massive throughout ‘All Born Screaming’. Dave Grohl drums on that tune, in addition to on the explosive lead single ‘Damaged Man’, however it’s clear that that is pure, unfiltered Annie Clark. The album’s entrance part is thrashing and lacerating – a dispatch from the abyss – as she revels in morbid imagery that speaks to a interval through which she was besieged by loss (true to mercurial type, she’s declined to be drawn on specifics). After which one thing unusual occurs. With the melted Bond theme ‘Violent Instances’, she ushers the listener via a secret door that results in a mellower vibe.
On ‘The Energy’s Out’, backed by a laconic bassline and aching slide guitar, she shrugs: “No-one can save us.” It’s the sound of acceptance that there are few completely satisfied endings, which is mirrored on the sprawling title monitor. Right here St. Vincent and fellow pop outsider Cate Le Bon dance via the album’s central conceit that we exit as we are available in – kicking and screaming – so that you may as properly embrace the chaos. In ditching the artifice, Annie Clark has made her most beneficiant and open assertion but.
Particulars
- Launch date: April 26, 2024
- File label: Virgin Music/Fiction Information
