St Vincent - s/t (25 February 2014)

"Oh what an ordinary day / Take out the garbage, masturbate"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c5BhXdVBqw

http://cdn4.pitchfork.com/news/53057/b3b2ca91.jpg

01 Rattlesnake
02 Birth in Reverse
03 Prince Johnny
04 Huey Newton
05 Digital Witness
06 I Prefer Your Love
07 Regret
08 Bring Me Your Loves
09 Psychopath
10 Every Tear Disappears
11 Severed Crossed Fingers

her last one was hit and miss, but i'm looking forward to this one.

David Byrne's silver hair must be contageous.

obligatory "would marry" post here.

Last 30 seconds superfluous. Otherwise it's the best Girls Aloud record in eight years.

She is fabulous and I'm very much looking forward to this.

i must say, off the last album "Cruel" was the only track I really really loved (and I did really really love it), but the Byrne collab has really grown on me. The track 'Optimist' is especially good.

Optimist is wonderful.

well i'll say one thing, that is a lot of fucking chicken wire she's got there

And a fucking massive potty.

New song is fantastic. Love her three albums so much and cannot wait for this one.

Another new song. This album is going to be strange.

http://youtu.be/-7LsBjrqqHA

Birth in Reverse was...eh. Digital Witness is full on great, tho.

So there doesn't seem to be a lot of hype for this album around here.

Another new song.

http://www.nme.com/news/st-vincent/75313

Lovely stuff.

Yeah, really like that.

Really excited for this album.

This is one of the better songs I've heard of hers. Still kind of spoiled by gimmicky production featuring grating, unnecessary distortion (this seems to be her thing and it's pretty much a deal breaker for me since I find most of her songwriting not bad but not exceptional, either). It's a sound that probably won't age well. Not exactly a groundbreaking set of chord changes, but a nice tune. Just too bad about the production. She lost some points after the John Barry You Only Live Twice ripoff song a few years back, too. Why would someone do that? I guess it's a step up from yelling over a slowed down Curtis Mayfield record.

This is out there now. I like it a lot for the most part, takes a dip in the last few tracks (second last track in particular is really bad).

I'm actually a little bit in shock at how incredible this album is. I do love her three albums so far but this one just seems like it's in a different league and is very close to being a perfect record. Prince Johnny, Regret and Psychopath are my early favourites but every song has something really great about it.

i just listened to the previews on itunes and it seems more accessible and immediate than anything i remember from her.

It's definitely a lot easier to take in than Strange Mercy. It's just a really beautiful record.

But yeah, big fan of the major-label-accessible version of St. Vincent in general.

don't get me wrong. i like every album she's released (and -- on an unrelated point -- i am transfixed by her beauty).

Same here Daniel.

Not a fan of "Every Tear Disappears" or "Bring Me Your Loves," but the other 9 probably make up my fave record of hers so far. She could stand to vary the sonics a bit more on the next one, though.

Every Tear Disappears is the weakest song but I still like it. At the moment I Prefer Your Love has become my favourite and could be the best song she's done.

Rattlesnake reminds me of Post-era Bjork, for some reason. So far I'm enjoying this record more than I thought I would (and I loved both Actor and Strange Mercy).

I can't wait to hear this! I really enjoyed watching her play songs at the new york fashion show. She's got some cool choreography going on too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgZWGJZHkGM

i love watching her play guitar.

is this song in mime

OK... wow. Because musically that song is interesting and dynamic and both not what I would have expected from St Vincent, but also weirdly *completely* totally sounding distinctively her...

But her STAGE PRESENCE, holy shit! She really has been hanging out with David Byrne too much, and he has been rubbing off on her in the best possible way. She's mesmerising and amazing, and yeah, she always has been fantastic to watch, but I love the theatricality and the "mime" and her expression while she plays/dances is absolutely the best.

Alright, I was going back and forth as to whether I should get this album due to mixed reactions, but, um, YES. Need more of this.

Choreography is an art I wish I understood more.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/swans-finish-next-two-hour-epic-to-be-kind-with-st-vincent-20140214

Can't wait for this record (except I can, otherwise I'd download it and I don't want to hear it til I've bought it), and she's playing in Bristol ON MY BIRTHDAY.

OMG OMG when is your birthday again?

(I have to go to Bristol soon, maybe it's the same weekend? I hope so, because ironically it is the weekend that Interpol are playing in my hood and I'm glad of an excuse not to go.)

May 15th.

Ha, that video is great!!

the woah-oh-oh-oh-ohs of "prince johnny" have been swirling around in my head all morning

Streaming in full at The Guardian now:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/feb/18/st-vincent-st-vincent-album-stream

ty voodoo chili. this is great.

prince johnny is epic. best, most immediate song she's done; the backing choir and the build to the chorus is fantastic.

Streams are so damn unreliable on this connection, but wwooooo, excited to hear this!

(Oh, this is the song from the jerky-dance video and it's even AWESOMER and jerkier on record.)

streaming @ NPR, too. and this is getting "mixed reactions" you say?!? from whome? it's fucking fantastic is what it is, 2014's first off-the-line aoy contender afaic. varied, risky, catchy, clever and addictive as hell. immediately wanted to go back and replay like every single song (but restrained myself in favor of the "album experience").

and yeah, i'm suprised by the relatively low level of anticipatory slavering itt. thought she was a designated local hero. did that half-boring byrne collaboration glaze everyone's eyes? this is at least a thousand times better. kate bush people need to be on this.

you did not just... RMDE RMDE and KMT and SMH no.

I'm so into the synth-bass farts on this record. She's always had an amazing sonic ear, but this record is just so... "oooooh, what *IS* that odd noise, I ~lyke~ it?"

2014's first off-the-line aoy contender afaic. varied, risky, catchy, clever and addictive as hell.

― contenderizer, Wednesday, February 19, 2014

it's v good, but 2014's only album-of-the-year contender so far? hm, no.

• tinariwen's emmaar
• sun kil moon's benji
• katy b's little red
• childbirth's it's a girl! (okay, this one's a little idiosyncratic; still . . . )

I liked the Byrne collab but was a bit disappointed by her last album Strange Mercy which had a couple of good moments but mostly just felt a bit awkward. Really love Actor from 2009 though. What I've heard from this so far sounds great though. Really think she's a fantastic "rock star" in an old fashioned kind of sense.

She's always had an amazing sonic ear, but this record is just so... "oooooh, what *IS* that odd noise, I ~lyke~ it?"

yeah, also like the fact that there isn't a clear palette of such sounds that she's working from. each song seems composed of the pieces necessary for it, regardless of how little they might have in common with the tones & timbres employed elsewhere. not that she doesn't have a cache of go-to favorites, especially where the guitars are concerned...

speaking of byrne as an influence, couldn't help but hear digital witness' "people turn the tv on it looks just like a window" as a lost and unrecorded talking heads line, right down to the faux-naive delivery.

It's February, can we stop all this "album of the year contender!" nonsense? In fact can we stop it every month. Inane and idiotic.

"people turn the tv on it looks just like a window"

There's a Byrne song on the Byrne/Vincent album all about TV which I thought was a bit trite and anachronistic at the time.

it's v good, but 2014's only album-of-the-year contender so far? hm, no.

tinariwen's emmaar
sun kil moon's benji
katy b's little red
childbirth's it's a girl!

need to hear that tinariwen, but i've never been a kozelik or katy b fan, so i wouldn't expect my possibles list to overlap all that much w yours. other favorites so far:

warpaint - warpaint
against me! - transgender dysphoria blues
cynic - kindly bent to free us
behemoth - the satanist

It's February, can we stop all this "album of the year contender!" nonsense? In fact can we stop it every month. Inane and idiotic.

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 19, 2014 6:52 AM (14 minutes ago)

your face is inane and idiotic

I liked the Byrne collab but was a bit disappointed by her last album Strange Mercy which had a couple of good moments but mostly just felt a bit awkward. Really love Actor from 2009 though. What I've heard from this so far sounds great though. Really think she's a fantastic "rock star" in an old fashioned kind of sense.

― doglato dozzy (dog latin)

It's much less awkward than Strange Mercy. Most of it is really instant and catchy.

I Prefer Your Love has just taken over for me. One of the most heartbreaking songs I've ever heard.

As for album of the year contenders. This is ahead of Wild Beasts and Katy B for me, by quite a long way. Yeah I know it's early to say that but it will be take a lot for something to beat it. It's a perfect record. Up there with When Saints Go Machine and iamamiwhoami as the best albums I've heard this decade, yeah I went there.

xx Relax Sick, it's just another way of saying he really likes it. Is it OK if I just say it's the best album I've heard so far this year?

It's February, can we stop all this "album of the year contender!" nonsense? In fact can we stop it every month. Inane and idiotic.

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 19, 2014 6:52 AM (14 minutes ago)

your face is inane and idiotic

― contenderizer, Wednesday, February 19, 2014 4:08 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Generally, yeah.

I just hate this language of discourse; every idiot with a twitter account pronouncing "the new Nut Sniffers record is my album of the year already!" every five minutes through January and February as if they give away a personal prize. It's reductive and silly! Just say you like something a lot and why, don't set up some kind of arbitrary pseudo-spreadsheet! Hate it hate it hate it.

x-post: that's preferable, DL, certainly, but I just hate the absolutist terminology we all fall into. I feel like it gets worse ever year.

I'm generally down on telling people how they're allowed to express their enthusiasm.

Like I can even decide what the ~best album this year~ is going to be until I've seen what Interpol's haircuts are doing on the record they're currently finishing!

Stupid stream cut out after 3 tracks and I can't get back on. It's probably my connection, not the Grauniad but still irritating. ;_;

I really liked the awkwardness of Strange Mercy; I think she does "awkward" really beautifully. But then, I thought Love This Giant was one of the albums of 2012. The whole brass thing really did it for me.

What a disaster for Nut Sniffers.

Nut Sniffers album isn't all that imo. Emperor's new nuts.

Hate is such a strong word.

I really liked the awkwardness of Strange Mercy; I think she does "awkward" really beautifully.

Yes, oh yes, I wouldn't want it any other way although Strange Mercy just didn't work terribly well for me. I'd rather have 'awkward' than having the edges planed off her music though. I'm hoping this new one strikes a happy medium.

I'm generally down on telling people how they're allowed to express their enthusiasm.

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Wednesday, February 19, 2014 4:19 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The thing is, it's pretty much exactly this instinct that's driving me mad; I feel like it's very limiting in terms of how people express their enthusiasm, because it's such an overwhelming presence as a metric to express that enthusiasm. What gets in an end-of-year list? Is that the only way we understand quality? It just seems spreadsheety and data-y and horrible to me. I literally know people who keep a spreadsheet of all the records they listen to every year and mark them all individually, and that just seems absolutely horrible to me. I appreciate it might be a useful 'tool', but uergh. How do you even know how to rank things? Put them in order? Assign a score? What if you change your mind? What if affections fade or grow? At the end of the year do you just stop listening to that year's records and start again? What does that say about music?

I don't mark records (except for work, obvs) but I do keep a list because it reminds me what I've been listening to if, for example, a friend asks me what I'd recommend, because otherwise my mind goes blank. Plus I always need an EOY list for ILM and other places anyway so why not have one that evolves throughout the year? I change my mind all the time, like everyone else. To me it's not about data or grading or suggesting that one album is measurably better than the next - it's more about getting on top of a vast amount of music and not feeling exhausted by it.

great stuff here.

I still, pointedly, get everything I like physically, and I keep all the new stuff in a pile together - two piles, actually; one for brand new releases, one for back catalogue stuff picked up at random. That's my list, I guess.

CHEERS CHARLIE

Aaaanyway, I think that each of her albums apart from the Byrne collab has been better than the last and it's thrilling to hear her go more pop without sacrificing any of her energy and unpredictability.

Strange Mercy is the one that, like, random phrases pop into my head at inappropriate times, though.

(I cannot wait to get earwormed by "take out the garbage, masturbate" to be honest.)

'Cruel' was so good. My other favourite by her is the one that goes 'Paint the hole blacker, paint the hole blacker' and 'Ice Age' off of Byrne/Vincent is gorge too.

"Ohhh, Elisha... don't make me wait..." DUR-DURR-DUR-DUR DURRRR DURRR DURRRRRRRRRR

i thought she was a shredder now, when is she just gonna shred

I got four songs in and there was massive shreddage! The guitar solo on that Huey song!

'Cruel' was so good.

Many are the times when the little chorus guitar riff from that gets stuck in my head.

The thing is, it's pretty much exactly this instinct that's driving me mad; I feel like it's very limiting in terms of how people express their enthusiasm, because it's such an overwhelming presence as a metric to express that enthusiasm. What gets in an end-of-year list? Is that the only way we understand quality? It just seems spreadsheety and data-y and horrible to me. I literally know people who keep a spreadsheet of all the records they listen to every year and mark them all individually, and that just seems absolutely horrible to me. I appreciate it might be a useful 'tool', but uergh. How do you even know how to rank things? Put them in order? Assign a score? What if you change your mind? What if affections fade or grow? At the end of the year do you just stop listening to that year's records and start again? What does that say about music?

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy)

I don't keep a spreadsheet exactly but I do rate all the albums I listen to and keep a list throughout the year (Okay I do on Rate Yor Music if that wasn't obvious) My main reason for doing this are I love lists and have that High Fidelity like addiction to them. It's also a really good way of keeping track of everything I listen to and when it comes to the end of year I can easily compile my favourites when I need to. Yeah I assign a score but if I change my mind I change the score (I also change the order of my lists regularly too, it's not that hard to do) Another thing I get out of it is when I look further down my lists I see things I initially dismissed or thought had promise but never gave a second chance to, I'm reminded to give them another go. This happened with the Charli XCX album last year. I listened to a stream and thought it was just okay. Saw it low down on my list in December and gave it another a go and ended up falling in love with it. If I hadn't seen it on my list I might have forgotten it and not ended up voting for it on the ILM poll. I love discovering albums late on like that, not everything I listen to is that instant (it took me years to love some of my favourite albums) I usually listen to over a hundred new albums a year and plenty of old ones too. I usually can't remember what I've listened to throughout the year without keeping track.

One last thing is my brother does this too and now we live in different countries I can see what he's been listening to daily and email him about it. It's a a really nice way of keeping in touch as we are both a couple of music obsessed nerds who've always liked to keep up to date with each others listening habits.

Obviously I'm able to listen to more albums these days due to Spotify, downloading and streaming. Up until 2008/9 I used to buy everything I wanted to hear. Since then I've thrown out/sold so many albums I wasted money on just to hear them. Back when I bought CD's it was easier to keep track of what I listened to but not any more (I could have made piles of CD's back then like you do) I do buy physical copies if I like an album as I still value my collection.

Sorry this is a bit of a ramble. Just trying to explain why ranking/listing things is a fun thing for me.

Wait, has the Nut Sniffers album leaked!?

new Nut Sniffers isn't even the best Nut Sniffers album. gtfo with aoty claims.

I dismissed St. Vincent for the longest time because of her associations with the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, thinking that if it was anything like those two acts, no thanks. I heard a few songs from Strange Mercy and liked those, but with this album, I'm fully on board. I'm glad I came around on time.

hm. she sounds nothing like either of those other acts.

Yeah, that was my point and my previous assumption (and hence, mistake).

I'm sure there are other artists who I've probably wrongly dismissed due to "OMG, they worked with *them*?" but I think at this point everyone in the known universe has been in Polyphonic Spree at one point or another, so it's hard to hold that against anyone.

And hey, I completely understand the appeal of keeping lists or "AOTY spreadsheets" (though I usually did it with Last.fm rather than actual spreadsheets). It's most useful to me as a kind of musical snapshot of "me during this period" - not just the things I was into and what I rated, but also the way that keeping a list focuses... well, when you listen to an album lots during a specific period, it picks up a lot of the emotional resonances of that time. If I look at a list of my "AOTY" from 2009, I can see Actor on it, and listen to it and think BOOM! that's who and where I was in 2009. Where otherwise I might have forgotten. I love that of the EOY process, it's like writing memories to an archive, using music.

But yeah, I think we can all agree that deciding "OMG, AOTY!" in February, based on one stream on SoundCloud is a little silly. This feels a lot like one of those albums that is going to reveal more and more with each repeated listen. Because as immediate a visceral "WOW!" reaction I get from her material, the detailing really knocks me out with each repetition.

Assigning scores is not really something I get, at all. It's such a Grade Point Average approach approach to music. I think I'd rather read the old OKC style "three words to describe yourself" attached to a record, rather than a score, but I know I'm in the minority on this. *BB says, getting per own P4k score tattooed on per arm*

I love that of the EOY process, it's like writing memories to an archive, using music.

Exactly. I've also kept a playlist (used to be one side of a C90) of my favourite songs for every month since October 1992 because I'm too lazy to write a diary.

on today's 3rd listen, i still wanna go back after every song & listen again. is it telling that "digital" witness (w the long-lost heads line) brings the horns from love this giant with verse rhythms and a chorus that would have fit right in on little creatures. not talking smack. it's a better version of talking heads than byrne himself has managed in 20-some years.

and yeah, i did go back for a second dip on that one

second quote mark got a little confused there

"Digital Witness" gets done, lyrically, in 3.5 mins what Arcade Fire spent 90 mins on last year.

Can't quote because iPhone but wow, that's a brilliant idea, DL (wow, I miss Spotify)

Is that the only way we understand quality? It just seems spreadsheety and data-y and horrible to me.

This.

Haven't heard this record yet, probably will at some point, and though I appreciate St Vincent's music, wouldn't call myself a real "fan". However, this action, to "rate" and encapsulate a musical experience as a number, used to compare to other numbers/experiences -- it's one of the reasons I stopped writing about music. This is not the Academy Awards, and publicity campaigns notwithstanding, it doesn't have to result in music "contending" for anything at all. Fuck the way money corrupts people, and fuck the way marketing/publicity frames a piece of music. And I sincerely hope that when I do hear this record, some of it will ring true or beautifully to me, because that's the only thing that will overcome all the bs that I know goes into making and popularizing a record. /soapbox

I make myself mixes in Acid Pro as a kind of guide to what I'm listening. Quite handy.

i don't know that rationing of "like" has to be some soulless, art-killing, number-driven exercise. i'm speaking foolishly because i only heard this record for the first time a few hours ago, but it's way out in front as my favorite album of the year, so far. and fuck that "year" if necessary. it's the best album i've heard in a while, a minute, some significant but indeterminate piece of time. it get up on top of my heart and has its way. i wish to announce my love to the world. if the words i've chosen up your hackles, then i've done st. vincent a disservice. you should listen to this. it's good.

edits:

that the rationing of like
it gets up on top

it's a shorthand way of expressing enthusiasm for something

fuck the way marketing/publicity frames a piece of music. /soapbox

― Dominique, Wednesday, February 19, 2014

fair point. i try to listen to music without undue focus on hype. but sometimes i don't trust my ears (i wonder if i'm discriminating enough). sometimes there's value to music sites who pre-screen the wave of titles i have no time to examine (even though that pre-screening process results in a lot of gems remaining undiscovered). and there's something to a communal experience with other fans, who are equally excited about a new record's release, but that tends to happen only with discs that have a sufficiently sizable audience.

i should be too old to worry about hype. as of today, i'm nine short years away from enjoying meal-discounts at denny's.

The first paragraph of this Rick Moody interview is a peach.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/st_vincent_i_have_this_sound_in_my_head_how_do_i_get_it_here_in_my_fingers/

Why was I so uncomfortable around Annie Clark, better known by her musical moniker, St. Vincent?

um, cuz you gotta crush?

OMG OMG OMG, I actually had to stop reading because I was hyperventilating when I went from reading about her guitar pedals to reading about her set design and the ~semiotics of dying her hair grey~ and OMG I just love this woman too too much. I'm going to bookmark this interview and come back and read it again when I have rediscovered my ability to can...

I mean, SELDA!!!! She was going on about how much she loves Selda!!! *dies of cool*

is that the lady from Enon in her backing band?

no

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfUa-0jc2U

Oh, so that's what “I prefer your love to Jesus” is about.

Also, note to self: look up Turkish musician Selda

Selda is *amazing*! I think there's a reissue of her s/t on the Anatolian Invasion imprint of Finders Keepers and also she's done a ton of collaborations with Mogollar as well as other great Turkish musicians. "Ince Ince" is probably her best known jam if someone can find it on YouTube & link up.

really like 'bring me your loves', the digital guitar sound and cell phone interference percussion and ersatz second line groove. her albums are always amazing sonically (drum sounds especially). they sound expensive.

oh, so that's where that mos def beat comes from (selda).

tylerw was talking about Toko Yasuda iirc. she's in Enon, Blonde Redhead and St. Vincent.

I like this album a lot. Despite being a fan I've always found St. Vincent's albums a bit patchy, although now I'm wondering if I underrated Strange Mercy.

Having listened to it again this afternoon, I've come to the conclusion that Strange Mercy is oddly back-loaded. The last four songs are sucker punches all in a row. It's Dilettante that's the one I really really love at the moment. But mostly because I'm such a sucker for fuzz bass & that song has a monster fuzz bass. (There's some kind of modulation like a wah or lo-pass filter going on, too, which just hits my complete guitar pedal sweet spot, it's such a massive, monstrous, almost ugly sound, it's so dirty I love it)

I always thought it was quite a front loaded album. Cruel, Cheerleader, Surgeon and Northern Lights are my favourite songs on there. Year of the Tiger is an excellent closer but I always kind of forget about Hysterical Strength and Champagne Year.

I think it's a good sign when two people can have such different ideas of what its strengths are!

i don't think i like her rhythm section

it's got this radio-ready pop-friendly indie-rock feel to it that just seems dead to me, like the 00s codification of backbeats and drum fill ideas for music that's required for traditional and economic reasons to have drums in it

Man, I love that St. Vincent is a thing that people listen to, but my own love for her music is usually confined to an idea here, a sound there. She's my favourite guitarist going, basically, and every moment that she's not shredding is a moment I wish she was shredding. For every David Toopy loop like on "Rattlesnake" there's a (as j says) "radio-ready pop-friendly backbeat" like on the following track. Also, all her songs follow this barrel-organ kind of harmonic sensibility that remind me of carousel-music, but that's my problem, not hers, I think. Love her to bits but my favourite songs of hers are the Rapeman and Pop Group covers (prob the best covers of anything I've ever heard ever)

Sorry, Big Black covers, duh

haha yeah i was going to say her big black one also slays

idk i was hoping initially for this album to sound like "krokodil" but i am very satisfied with the way this album has turned out, kind of obsessed w/ it atm

You know, if you want to listen to someone who SHREDS every second of every track, go and listen to In Advance Of The Broken Arm. Shredding is boring if shredding is the only thing an artist ever does. It's both far more beautiful, but also more unsettling when someone builds up a pretty or elegant or carefully organised and constrained mood, and then blasts this eruption of shredding right through it. Which is what she excels at.

Because what hooked me from Actor on, was the way that she would construct these lovely things, which maybe occasionally swayed a bit too far into the hokey - there was occasionally a bit of the Disney Soundtrack, with all these swooping sentimental strings (the same kind of mood, though not necessarily *sound* that would make a lot of people say "fuck no!" to late period Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips during their Musicals on Mars phase) - though that said, there is a *weirdness* to some actual classic era Disney soundtracks, Dumbo and the Jungle Book and stuff (where is Melissa W?) where even as a child - *especially* as a child - you realise there is something very, very odd going underneath all the sweetness. That kind of mellotron orchestral "aaaaaahhhh" noise she uses all over the back of e.g. Prince Johnny.

So I get lulled into this state of both false security, and tension, and then the SHREDDING GUITAR BIT comes in and the whole song disintegrates around it like melting celluloid film. Which is somehow so much *better* than if she just shredded all the way through.

Anyway, I appear to have got up early enough to get a working stream today, so I am halfway listening to it now.

^ great post

Agree on this, there's something slightly sugary about a lot of her music, but sugary can also mean edgy, unsettling, hypertensive and that's why I like a lot of her stuff. There's a great light/dark juxtaposition in her work.

Yeah, anyone who dismisses music as "sugary" with the assumption that it's some... meaningless confectionary. Like... have you ever seriously indulged in a *lot* of sugar for its warping, druglike effects? That's the kind of brittle, tense, sugary thing she excels at.

i think the only disappointing thing about this album for me is that there isn't a key change at the end of "severed crossed fingers". the build up kind of demands it and the result isn't as climactic as it should be, imo.

but otherwise, this is so good, omg @ the basslines in prince johnny.

this is great. i'm not hearing much "shredding," but her guitar-playing is (for the most part) nicely woven into the fabric of her songs. melodies and arrangements are strong here. drum sound's a little flat, but you can't have everything, i guess.

I've heard this all the way through now. Is it me or is it very short? It was all over so quickly! I guess that's the sign of a good album, which it is. Spiky in a punkish way. Nothing on here quite as pretty as 'The Strangers' nor as succinctly pop as 'Cruel' but there are so many high points - can't wait to hear it again.

Last night's show was the most remarkable thing I've seen in ages. So theatrical - every move calculated - and yet raw when it needed to be, like a blend of Kate Bush, David Byrne, Janelle Monae and Jack White. She makes the electric guitar seem new again, like some bizarre alien noise machine, her dance moves are both disconcerting and hilarious (one bit was as if the models from Addicted to Love had killed Robert Palmer and taken over) and she's utterly magnetic. I feel like she's one televised Glastonbury appearance away from dazzling a lot of people who haven't heard of her before.

I'm hearing a bit of Sinead O'Connor in parts of the new album. Really want to see this live show now

i don't think i like her rhythm section

it's got this radio-ready pop-friendly indie-rock feel to it that just seems dead to me, like the 00s codification of backbeats and drum fill ideas for music that's required for traditional and economic reasons to have drums in it

This is the #1 thing that's wrong with her I think, like all her upbeat tracks have this stiff and jerky put-together-with-Lego quality to them that just does not work for me. I really dislike the clunkiness of the horns on the single right now, for example. I wish she'd loosen it up a bit more because you basically have to be Prince to pull off that kind of metronomic stiffness and Prince she aint.

I listened to the new album and when she lets the tempo drop and abandons the kitchen sink production choices she can be sublime.

Reading a lot of the advance press for this album you can really sense the desperation for a kind of Prince/Byrne/Kate Bush auterish figure to emerge but I'm still not convinced she's it.

she might not quite be there yet, but there's time IMO. The herky-jerkiness is a Marmite thing. You're either gonna hate it or just assume it's part of the package. And seriously, as a non-genre performer and artist and musician, there's no reason she couldn't be Prince on the next release, she's definitely got the scope and the talent. It's like every release has hinted at that kind of greatness and I feel like she's just getting warmed-up; just starting to shed her status as a leftfield musician to becoming a fully-fledged pop/rock artist.

she might not quite be there yet, but there's time IMO. The herky-jerkiness is a Marmite thing. You're either gonna hate it or just assume it's part of the package.

otm. i love it, but can see where it might grate. would love to see her double down on the implied funk, but then, yeah, she'd probably need a better rhythm section.

herky-jerky know how

There's a law for everything
And for St. Vincents that sing to keep
The drums that Matt DC will not allow
Herky Jerky nohow
Herky Jerky nohow oh

People I am feeling this record.

Yeah I've listened to it maybe one and a half times through and already a lot of the songs are embedded in my consciousness. A wizard, a true star.

A

this album's getting great reviews and i think it's deserved.

that song i prefer your love to jesus is thrilling, and is provocative and a little confrontational in exactly the way a great rock song should be.

I thought this was okay?

I've struggled with it all week.

The songs aren't sticking.

these songs are much more memorable to me than anything on her past albums.

i prefer your love to jesus, rattlesnake, and prince johnny are hooking-in deep.

makes me want to return to her earlier discs, to see what i may have been missing.

xposty Haven't heard this yet, but the first Sinead album really is a great example of how to combine slow temps, agit-funk, tunes, baroque production and stuff

"And I think, in some regards, that was her mission: not to be the exception but to be the new rule."

I. LOVE. HER.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-02-26/music/the-bulletproof-altar-of-st-vincent-annie-clark/full/

The synths on this album are amazing. The sounds are very 80s-ish, but they're not just used as signifiers or as pastiche - they are put to very different purposes. "Huey Newton" and "Regret" have been stuck in my head since I first heard the full album on Tuesday.

these songs are much more memorable to me than anything on her past albums.

― Daniel, Esq 2, Monday, February 24, 2014 3:10 PM (2 days ago)

otm, and i quite like her past albums

Heard Del the Funky Homosapien interviewed on the radio the other day, and he referenced a point David Byrne made in his book, namely that too much live performance these days tries to replicate the studio, but it was the performance that came first. I immediately thought of Annie Clark's evolution as a performer, something that seems to have accelerated since she crossed paths with Byrne. My only issue with her as a performer, though, is that despite all her creativity and talent, she's too wedded to a script live, whether it's the choreography, the arrangements, even the actual (per that Voice article) script. This may have gotten more pronounced since she toured with Byrne, too. But she's so mind bogglingly talented, imo, that I really want to see/hear her cut loose in a less affected robot way. Like when I saw her last and she covered the Pop Group. Sure, she may do that a lot, but there was an element of chaos to the performance that was really in the moment, as opposed to proceeding along a preordained performance path.

Byrne's very much about choreography etc and I think he got that in turn from Eno who has said himself that he has a problem with styles like free jazz because they're not affected by creative constraint. Did the Eno/Byrne axis ever embrace improvisation of any sort? Eno must have done some work in improv surely?

With the caveat that I have not yet seen her live: I don't have a problem with scripted, theatrical performances, in fact there's a part of me that really loves them. I also think that "cutting loose" in the live area is way overrated, and when you see any band performing in the middle of a year-long tour or whatever, there's little of any "live performance" that doesn't become scripted through repetition. (It's kinda shocking when you see a supposedly "live" band several nights on a tour, and see even the "natural" between song-banter repeated) I appreciate her for actually putting the effort into dreaming up something which will be appealing and interesting. I'm kind of fascinated by the craft she puts into it.

I think in a situation like that, where every dance move and every line is scripted, it gives her more freedom to go with musical improvisation if she chooses too, in fact I think it's probably more likely when every other part of it is taken care of.

(But to me, chaos is more interesting when it's a counterpoint against rigourous perfection)

But really, for the most part: improvisation and especially the act of "cutting loose" are way, way overrated.

xpost I mean, all of Eno's Roxy contributions, in the studio and live, were basically improvised; he never did the same thing twice. I guess he was always more clinical about chance, like as a means to an end but not necessarily an end in itself. Which may explain why he's spent so much time designing automatic systems to compose and play music, whether via his more primitive stuff with Fripp to his more current self-generating KOAN software.

I like scripted and choreographed stuff, but I've seen St. Vincent several times, and they've all been really ... stiff? By design, sure, but it's still a little tiresome. And I don't need to see her go totally free jazz (though that would be cool, too, to see her teamed with avant jazz sorts), just loosened up a bit. She's such a great guitarist.

Just curious if I'm alone here. Have any of you seen her a bunch and gotten the same vibe?

xxpost I like both, but yeah, one of the really great things about watching something like Stop Making Sense is the feeling that it's been totally pre-meditated and thought about before being performed.

I totally agree, but Stop Making Sense is choreographed and arranged (and filmed) to an almost ridiculously perfect degree.

This album reminds me of the last boring Neko Case record.

I still haven't heard it yet, but it's got to be better than that.

The New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen was pretty fascinating, in that it gave a glimpse of his rehearsals, which actually included testing out stage banter and seemingly "spontaneous" stuff, the idea being that when you're entertaining tens of thousands at once, there's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and that from pacing to performance, he wants to make sure something "works" or sounds right or whatever before he busts it out on stage.

This album reminds me of the last boring Neko Case record.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:19 AM (6 minutes ago)

wtf, they have almost nothing in common?

Singing archly over static beats.

Take issue with static in regard to this album.

The New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen was pretty fascinating, in that it gave a glimpse of his rehearsals, which actually included testing out stage banter and seemingly "spontaneous" stuff, the idea being that when you're entertaining tens of thousands at once, there's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and that from pacing to performance, he wants to make sure something "works" or sounds right or whatever before he busts it out on stage.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:21 PM

If you can find that, please can you drop that on the Image Bands thread, because this is *exactly* what I was getting at. That this notion of authenticity and spontaneity is completely scripted and cultivated, and I find this stuff so fascinating.

i don't think i like her rhythm section

it's got this radio-ready pop-friendly indie-rock feel to it that just seems dead to me, like the 00s codification of backbeats and drum fill ideas for music that's required for traditional and economic reasons to have drums in it

― j., Thursday, February 20, 2014

I think she mostly manages to transcend this, but I recognize the concern

Yeah, that's fascinating re: Springsteen.

I know a band who got the audience to sing 'happy birthday' to the drummer every night on one tour, each day claiming it was his birthday. The shit you think is funny when you're locked on a coach / in a van / etc for days or weeks on end.

Singing archly over static beats.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:34 AM (1 minute ago)

broad strokes, but okay. don't hear the st. vincent beats as "static" myself. there's a twitchy kind of swing moving things along, and a lot more variety & propulsion than what you get from neko case. the arch delivery has sometimes turned me off in the past ("chloe in the afternoon"), but it isn't bothering me here.

If you can find that, please can you drop that on the Image Bands thread, because this is *exactly* what I was getting at. That this notion of authenticity and spontaneity is completely scripted and cultivated, and I find this stuff so fascinating.

― Bipolar Sumner (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:38 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah totally. It's been my dream to get my band to do a local show where we mime the whole thing on cardboard cutout instruments, complete with taped stage banter on a backing track etc.

I remember going to see the Mighty Boosh live several years ago back when they were popular. It was the last leg of their tour and I remember laughing like a drain. I was disappointed to find upon buying the DVD later that all the gaffs and 'bits that went wrong' had obviously been tried and tested several times over the course of the tour.

i really tried with this album but i do not get her at all. lo-fi indie sounds are beyond my understanding, i should learn from this

lo-fi? maybe the drums are a bit drum-machiney but... I mean this barely resembles indie music to me any more. i'm not sure what it is, just guitar-pop I guess?

yeah, not hearing anything particularly "lo-fi" abt this. maybe "distorted" is what we're after?

This is close to being my thing. Rhythmically, in particular, I hear some affinity with Tune-Yards's whokill, one of my favourite albums of recent times. I'm just not hearing a lot of really great melodies or songs ideas.

i think i mean lo-fi? horrible drum sounds, cluttered production, sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe, my usual complaints with this style of music. i don't think i'm going to go back to it to make this a productive semantic discussion tho

feel like this album aims for prince in places and comes out sounding more like beck, it's about as funky as cardboard. i do like the eurythmics-iness of digital witness though

Crossposting to the Image Thread:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all

definitely have no idea why anyone even brought up prince in the first place, seems wildly off-base to me. beck makes sense though (and i've never liked him either) (and i would call most of his stuff lo-fi too)

fidelity is a question of how well a recording reproduces what was originally played. so distortion is only "lo-fi" if it is introduced by the recording process. many xposts

Singing archly over static beats vs sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe

It's a wrong-off

I don't think stuff like this is lo-fi, it's just hyper stylized in its distortion and abrasiveness, like Dave Fridmann productions (think: Flaming Lips).

I think "sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe" counts as lo-fi, since you are saying the whole album sounds like it was run through a pretty dramatic filter? (which I don't hear)

I have similar issues with John Congleton, producer, as I do with Dave Fridmann, and co-sign on "lo-fi", though I would just say "blown out American indie". Every sound was a nice sound! good sound! and then it was run through a reverse-DI into a Death By Audio pedal and then an Electrix roving filter and back through a refurbished Gates compressor and I picture a guy being all like "whoaaaaaa sounds awesome"

Congleton also produced the new Angel Olsen album, which I also disliked.

I don't know Congleton and he has worked on some records I love and I don't like to play the blame game re: producers. But yeah, sometimes an indie record goes for that "pedal board the size of a canoe" sound and I don't like that sound. This is not a bad sounding record! I like it, but can definitely agree with lex on the "lo fi"

this is why you have to play words with friends while recording the album. so you don't run everything through a pedal at the end and think it's awesome.

Congleton also produced the new Angel Olsen album, which I also disliked.

haaaa i tried this last week and couldn't get into it either for exactly the same reason (though was more frustrated with olsen b/c i felt like there were some really striking songs trying to get out from under the lo-finess)

I don't think he knew what to do with her electric songs (tbf I don't think she did either).

I don't think stuff like this is lo-fi, it's just hyper stylized in its distortion and abrasiveness, like Dave Fridmann productions (think: Flaming Lips).

otm, this record actually sounds hi-fi and expensive to me (drums especially!). the parts where the guitar sounds like it was recorded in that dry direct way (no amp) all feel like very intentional choices.

I don't understand Lex's definition of lo-fi if he thinks this album qualifies.

isn't Mr Pretend's whole thing that he doesn't like anything with a remote whiff of rockism or stuff that Q/Mojo writers would ride for? so why would he fuck with her in the first place? am surprised he likes Sky Ferreira…and it would seem "lo-fi" connotes "music not made in order to compete with Danity Kane's "Bye baby" to him.

her shit made no impression on me until I heard the "garbage/masturbate" couplet, and the tune went straight in the memory bank. Just watched her do the song on Colbert, and yesterday watched her talk to Matt Sweeney on his show. She mentioned he uncle Tuck from Tuck and Patti, and I don't think Sweeney had any idea that he was a big cheese in neo-Wes Montgomery/Jim hall guitar mill-yurr.

I don't know if this is the same as the lo-fi thing others are talking about but the effects used on the instrumentation especially the percussion evoke like a whirring collection of intricate mechanical toy instruments, like an intentional attempt to create this constrained miniaturized feeling

there is absolutely nothing lo-fi about this album

yeah, if you find it lo-fi it might be time to invest in some hi-fi: http://www.nathanmarciniak.com/elemental/

some vestigial strands of twee still in the dna

Listening now, pretty much sounds like the last couple of St. Vincent records. I agree the production/aesthetic lets the songs down. I always liked her first album because it seemed fussy and art-rocky but less interested in sublimating the songs in service of some weirdly stifling studio approach. A song like "Now Now" breathes like little of her recent stuff does. She has such a vision that I can't imagine someone telling her what to do - like Prince! - but I still wish she found the right person to tell her what to do, or what not to do, or push her outside of her safety zone, which only sounds safe, ironically, because she keeps doing it. Or maybe a better/looser rhythm section would do the trick, too.

I dunno. She seems to be doing more than well for herself, so what do I know.

It's like even when she leaves space in the music it doesn't feel spare. Even the quiet bits feel dense and exhausting, sometimes in a cool way, sometimes just ... exhausting.

Man, I love Death by Audio pedals. What doesn't sound better though a Death by Audio pedal.

"Pedalboard the size of a canoe" is the single most ~Canadian~ thing anyone on this board has ever said.

This is suffering in my ears by direct comparison with the Neneh Cherry, which is superfically quite similar (electronic production; female voice), but I suspect is trying to do something quite different, and I'm just much more 'ooooh' about the Neneh right now for whatever reason. I think this is good, and interesting, but I've not gone 'fuck me, this is great' at it yet, and I have at several moments of the Neneh.

The Neneh is a great comparison, not because they have a lot in common, but because you can hear how looser, sparer, "live"-er production can successfully support a strong personality. Clark's production doesn't exactly detract, but on her record, everything has personality, but she's got more than enough herself to carry the record without all the whirligigs and whatnots clanking and blooping and buzzing around. But then, Neneh has a few decades of experience over Clark, and a lot less to prove. Very different career places get very different results.

But then, Neneh has a few decades of experience over Clark, and a lot less to prove. Very different career places get very different results.

Yes, good points. "Buffalo Stance" is absolutely stuffed with sonic gimmicks, even for the time.

people have said "b-b-but you like the neneh cherry album" a couple of times after i've complained about st vincent now, i can't really explain why one rough, scratchy-sounding production is so off-putting while the other one i'm enjoying exploring (and suspect it's a bit of a false comparison given that they're different albums in most other respects) but neneh's album is a lot looser and sparser to my ears, and she's foregrounded a lot more over the rumbles and clanks

i had been vaguely wondering whether the neneh album deserves its own thread, it's a really terrific album but all the commentary so far (about four posters) is on the "buffalo stance" thread

It is a great album and there are some sonic similarities but Clark's lyrics are 100x better than Neneh's if you're into words and that.

v possibly true but neneh really sells her lyrics better (none of st v's registered that much apart from the masturbate line which i think i built up too much in my head before hearing it)

You should check out Prince Johnny for starters.

The only lyric that registered on Blank Project was "Life is going faster like a bus that runs me over" and that was for the wrong reasons.

i can see why one might prefer the stark & relatively organic-sounding neneh cherry album to st. vincent's (well-described) whirligigs and whatnots, but i enjoy the kaleidoscopic palette and compulsive filigree for their own sake. there's something quite tense about much of st. vincent, as though it rides, serene or twitching, atop a wave of anxiety. this quality is present in clark's mannered delivery as much as in the hyperkinetic music around her. "birth in reverse" reminds me strongly of early xtc, who share that jittery, seam-bursting intensity and kitchen sink sonics. also: tune-yards, talking heads, marnie stern, etc.

i do agree that the songs, while extremely enjoyable, aren't terribly catchy. i don't go around singing them, have to struggle to remember how a single song goes whenever i look at the tracklist. and i've listened to the album several times. i don't see this as a fault, as some music takes a bit longer to work its way in, and i enjoy st. vincent enough to happily put in whatever time might be required.

Lex I want you to come round my house and listen to these records with me. 'Rough' and 'scratchy' doesn't suit either of them as a description afaic; these both sound excellent and expensive and modern and hi-fi to me, albeit in different ways. I think some people have been using lo-fi in a really weird way that confuses me no end.

^^^

It's cool. Lex uses "Lo-fi" as a philosophical stance, indicating "indie-rock" rather than any kind of musical one.

lex, I dislike this record and Congletno but it's far from rough or scratchy.

*Congleton

xp Oh I think they're really catchy. Melody's never been a problem for St V imo.

i reject your shiny expensive consumerist stereo system on ideological grounds nick

TBF, I think the Neneh sounds pretty raw. In a good way, it sounds like a live radio session or something rather than a studio construct, particularly her vocals, which sound conspicuously under-produced, also in a good way.

i am listening to "prince johnny" and i take nothing back about "rough" or "lo-fi"! the guitars and the horrible drums, how does anyone not think those are demo-sounding.

actually reading the lyrics and they ARE kinda great but she's not selling them to me effectively and if there's any immediate hook it's eluding me completely

i should not get bogged down in threads about artists i dislike and don't intend to give more time but no one's talking about neneh

Is the Neneh album streaming anywhere (not spotify)?

But you love shiny expensive consumerist music, dude? (And most of my stereo is made up of components manufactured by small British and European companies, but whatever...)

http://www.notendownload.com/8/dpshopgrafiken/png/vorschaudruck/7070064_thumb.png

There's a bit of distortion on Prince Johnny, for instance (and deliberately on a lot of things she does; it's clearly an aesthetic thing for her), but man, the way this is mixed, the synth-vocals in the left channel; this is really deliberate and purposeful and expensive-sounding. Lo-fi to me says "recorded in a basement on a 4-track, sounds like shit, because we had no money and no other option".

As for lyrics being good, isolating them to judge quality is false logic; they have to work in context of song, arrangement, production, performativity.

Also thanks for the new display name!

Damn the length.

drums sound great on the neneh record, drums sound terrible on the st. vincent record

Drums sound real on the Neneh record, and very machine-y on the Vincent record; I prefer the former, certainly, but the latter isn't 'terrible', to my ears; it's an aesthetic choice for a very artificial-sounding record.

i am listening to "prince johnny" and i take nothing back about "rough" or "lo-fi"! the guitars and the horrible drums, how does anyone not think those are demo-sounding.

― lex pretend

The drums on the St. Vincent album sound fine to me. No idea why you're picking them out as a weakness on this album. Compare the drums on Prince Johnny to some of the songs on that Amel Larrieux album you love (Afraid and I Do Take in particular) How come she can get away with that sound? Some of those songs have much more of demo feel to them too, more than the St. Vincent album. I'm not saying it's a bad thing on Amel's album, I love that record. I just don't see the difference really. St. Vincent's album sounds so great and unique to me because she mixes styles very successfully. Her songs wouldn't be improved by live drums.

I do not not not understand why people continue to insist that "St Vincent" mayn't be described as lo-fi. "Prince Johnny" is trashy, over-compressed, filtered drum machines, the vocals are distorted, and this loud-as-shit Mellotron which is by definition a lo-fi instrument (and one that sinks records imo); unfortunately unable to really make comments about the frequency spectrum because I only have streaming but it sounds like the frequencies top out at 2kHz, there's definitely no sibilance on the vocals or splash (or presence) on the drums. Sorry to get all audio engineer in here but people are making things personal re: a very real and normal aural response

That makes me wonder is the streaming is on a different master, although I've not sat with this at the hi-fi properly all the way through yet.

I guess I'm stuck thinking "this is low-pass filtered because it was recorded on a boombox" = lo-fi, while "this is low-pass filtered because they low-pass filtered it in their fancy studio" = something else.

but goon tie clearly has the knowledge from the synth thread, so I will accept this as lo-fi. I just thought lo-fi was supposed to invoke bootleg cassette nostalgia.

No for real! Obv this is not a record made in the genre of "lo-fi". I'm defending the right of others to say something sounds lo-fi, when clearly there have been decisions made to make it sound "dirty" in a way that has been destructive to many instrument's higher frequencies. This isn't just a streaming thing-- though I don't trust the audio quality of streams-- I am listening to Tristan Murail Youtubes this morning and despite Youtube's highly restrictive lowpass filter there is tonnes of harmonic information here that is non-existent on Youtubes of "Prince Johnny".

If anybody hears the drums on "Prince Johnny" and thinks "wow what gloriously recorded drums, and in such high fidelity!" then there is nothing I can say to help you

Well no, of course not, but gloriously recorded, high fidelity, live-sounding drums would be totally alien to her aesthetic.

that's exactly why i was saying i should have known beforehand i wouldn't like it. idk, i saw good writing and interesting interviews and lots of talk about her and i was suckered in but this aesthetic is just...i can't even hear where the good bits are, it's alien to me

"Prince Johnny" is trashy, over-compressed, filtered drum machines

it's trashy, over-compressed, filtered live drums! which are way harder to record and make sound this full. they might have cut the live drums into samples and sequenced them, but her albums have lots of live drums that have been mixed to sound like samples & drum machines.

listen to the drums on 'bring me your loves', live but very meticulously recorded in a nice studio (live snare mixed into two tracks with different sounds and panned hard left & right, over what sounds like a programmed kick sample).

Haven't heard this record yet, enjoying all the talk. I just wanted to butt in to say that I absolutely love ilm for posts like this:

listen to the drums on 'bring me your loves', live but very meticulously recorded in a nice studio (live snare mixed into two tracks with different sounds and panned hard left & right, over what sounds like a programmed kick sample).

Like I love seeing someone that can nail this down so nicely for a non-drummer to get a handle on it.

"Bring Me Your Loves" is my favourite track FYI, \m/ and yeah the snare sounds awesome on it, cymbals too, (though sampled, I reckon)-- as does the granulatey fuzz solo on that guitar.

Yeah yeah not a drum machine on "Prince Johnny" but quantized and looped and run through an H919 emulator. There is a sliding scale of quality for that super straight and filtered drum "loop" sound with "The First Taste" as heaven and the remix of "Hey Jupiter" as hell.

Never heard of St. Vincent until I saw her on Colbert the other night.
I liked it and she seemed pretty interesting.

Psychopath is my favourite at the moment. The way she enunciates 'Cos I'm on the edge of a heart attack' in the first verse makes my ears melt. Then the main refrain comes in and it's such an familiar chord sequence and it sounds a bit like Blondie, but she pulls it off in this very particular affecting way.

I get why lex doesn't like this but also i kind of don't. There's loads of stuff with this kind of production aesthetic that I've seen you really enjoy in the past (I mean, the Knife are much more ragged than this), but if it's not for you it's not for you.

The Knife? Wtf

lol, thread reaches peak Lex challopsy

The Knife are many things but ragged is not one of them.

That's my point. But if you can enjoy the production choices on STH this is a walk in the park.

I kind of get what you mean, but STH and this sound VERY different, and Lex's problem, I suspect, is with particular artifacts, let's say, or manifestations, within the sonic palette that SV uses here. So it's not about busyness or unpredictability or juxtaposition or things jarring, or whatever, it's with timbres of certain instruments, deliberate choices in use of distortion, etcetera.

Listening to this album and discussing it here has made me think how post-Soft Bulletin Annie Clark seems in some ways; she's obviously doing something very different to the Flaming Lips, but there's a definite aesthetic line there, I think, that hadn't really occurred to me before.

Hmmmm. I do kinda see where that comparison is coming from, in that the two artists sound nothing alike, but the production choices are quite deliberately potentially off-putting.

I've been listening to St Vincent a lot these past 24 hours, and I'm starting to see where the haterz are coming from on the sound of it. It *is* weirdly produced. Especially coming from this 3-week binge of listening to The Band That Shall Not Be Named. Because listening to the later material of TBTSNBN, I am listening a *lot* to the slickness of the production values, and how everything has been shined up with this glossy commercial sheen and everything is just lubricated up to just slide into your ears like seduction. There's a place for that, but I do also feel very manipulated by it.

And the production on St Vincent is the complete opposite, it's all very "nope, I'm not going to make this easy for you." Which is intriguing, because they are such bouncy pop songs, with these earwormy melodies, but the sounds are deliberately trashed and messed about and chopped up and mangled. Not in a random, indiscriminate way, but in a very deliberate "sometimes this sounds like an AM radio playing in another room" way and sometimes in a "you want this shredding riff? you're going to have to tease it out" kind of way. Which, oddly, makes me actually want to listen to it more, in that it's cool and aloof while it susses *your* intentions out, rather than just being inaccessible.

The only complain I have is the lack of bass. Like, yeah, I get it, I get why you're using these weird keyboard squiggle fart sounds, because it goes with that cut-up live drum aesthetic. But there's really only one song where there's actual proper, full-on bass tone and it's like "OH HEY BABY you are what I've been missing."

BB 100% otm. I've come back to listening to bjork of late and I think it might because they have me a similar feeling.

Yes that's a great assessment BB

Who's TBTSNBN?

I'm not saying; it's too embarrassing.

you should be arrested by the international police for even asking that question

jaymc and his spreadsheets probably already work for that international crime-fighting organisation, sssshhhhh

God I am so into this album!! This is the first time I've rly listened to/enjoyed her and oh man "Rattlesnake" might make it to my year end top 20 list idk

something very 70s-rock about this album, and not just because prince johnny sounds like it could've played over a scene as things fell apart in boogie nights.

i wish she stretched-out like this with her guitar solos in the album version (at least of this song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ4mIVOrBMo

a short solo, but really well-done.

The album's sound quality took a little getting used to, but the second half won me over on first spin, more on the second. Her live SXSW stream on NPR got me right away, with a fuller sound, letting guitar and synth have much more room, though not too much. Then again, she ranged through the catalogue. Her set isn't posted on NPR, or anywhere else that I've checked, but it's worth checking titles on this set list, for a few YouTube excerpts of this show and others---from What Are You Listening To, my attempt at live coverage and another guy's better description of an earlier Texas show:

St. Vincent begins with the one about taking off her clothes and walking around in the desert at night, then running from a snake (true story). Twisting her guitar quite a bit.

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 04:15 (6 days ago) Permalink

Yowee. St Vincent w Toko Yasuda, keyboards, vocals, bass; also a drummer and another keyboard player way back there, at least when Yasuda stepped out with her bass, especially for some prog-metal toward the end. Rocking art rock, at times close to warp-toned Zep (with some early King Crimson,also late, no middle). Concise, though. New songs, supposedly more straight-forward, fit with old, as lyrics came off like marginalia, flying notes to self, bits of her self-cited "Joan Didion-esque" persona's elliptical clarity; ditto Marilyn Monroe's writing ("Surgeon" inspired by the latter). Stage show hyper-focused,floaty(rockin').
Albarn can't follow; don't think I'll stay awake for that (maybe they'll post his and hers).
Set List for St. Vincent:

Rattlesnake
Digital Witness
Cruel
Birth In Reverse
Regret
I Prefer Your Love
Surgeon
Cheerleader
Prince Johnny
Year Of The Tiger
Marrow
Huey Newton
Bring Me Your Loves
Krokodil

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:36 (6 days ago) Permalink

Think the persona she described is or was meant to be "Joan Didion-esque middle-aged woman on the verge," but on this occasion she also seemed to enjoy being young, eerie (buzzword of our age, after all), hot and dead(pan).

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:41 (6 days ago) Permalink

Also, as Houston Press blogger Chris Grey described her show better and earlier this week:
the mechanistic robo-funk of the rhythm section versus the overwhelming omnichords of the synthesizers or the shards of post-punk guitar versus that delicate little dance she yeah, yeah.

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:54 (6 days ago) Permalink

re the late King Crimson bit: I was thinking of the radio/video edit of "Sleepless," with long-ass solos excised.

going to see her next month in cincy. my brother gave me shit because i'm not going to see springsteen, who's playing cincy the same night. he takes the whole "i'm from new jersey" thing way too seriously, though.

at this point, a st. vincent concert >>>>>>>>>>>>>> a springsteen concert.

well it's certainly less expensive!

Jesus Regret is good

I've listened to this about four times through in the last days and it's really sinking in nicely now. Prince Johnny is especially good.

that said, she still does this thing where some of her melody lines remind me so much of other songs it kind of annoys me. the last song bears an uncanny resemblance to 'you stole the sun from my heart' by MSP and I'm sure there was a track which ripped off the chorus from a well known Supergrass song. St Vincent - secret Britpop fan.

Why is this album so expensive to buy on vinyl? Does it come with a bag of gold dust?

Good question. The few vinyl copies in the shops disappeared almost immediately when the album was first released, and it took a week or two for more to appear because they had to be imported, according to the guy who runs my local record shop. I assumed the price reflected the need to import this stuff, though I know nothing about this business. Nevertheless, my copy (which I think cost £22.99 in the end) sounds pretty good, a nice pressing.

quite reasonable in the US

that's fair enough, but i'm quite surprised and a bit sad that first of all there are so few copies around and that these are so expensive. it'll definitely affect sales for SV, and she deserves them.

Truck Records in Oxford didn't have it, but Head in Leamington Spa did. The guy at Truck mentioned that the embossed gold bits on the front cover was why it was limited edition and a bit pricier than other new releases. It was the gold dust after all!

Apparently the US early pressings were a bit shoddy, but yeah, the UK ones sound great and the gatefold looks lovely.

i bought it on vinyl a couple of weeks ago and it's beautifully packaged. seeing her on saturday, so stoked

lucky, i got ticks for the Cambridge show in Aug.

When it was first available to order here in the US you get the regular vinyl edition or pay $20 more and get a version that came with a single that was shaped like a triangle on gold vinyl. That sold out pretty quickly. I was considering getting that limited edition but shipping was another $15. Didn't want to end up paying $60 for the whole thing, as great as it is. Looking on Amazon.co.uk now there are copies now available for £12 but they're all from US sellers.

I think I'd managed not to hear any St. Vincent before (maybe the 1st album way back?) but I went to see her tonight and she puts on a hell of a show. Best use of a guitar I've heard in ages. Listening to the album now and it doesn't have the same energy so far.

i was looking out for you seandalai, shame we missed each other. also thought the live show was astounding. along with the s/t one you should also check out the 'actor' album.

i was pleasantly surprised by the support act, Arc Iris, too. Sort of jazzy folky prog from Low Anthem's Florence Wallis.

she's one of my favorite live performers, certainly

* Not Florence Wallis - Jocie Adams.

My new favourite bit on this album is on Huey Newton on the section that starts 'Hale Bopp, Hail Mary...' simply gorgeous

Her latest dispatch:

hello from a nyc coffeeshop amidst inchoate autumn. too pretentious a way to start a bulk email? fair enough. it is 9/11 today. last night, after long rehearsal (refine! rebuild! reuse! recycle!), i attended a party meant to celebrate "fashion" where i felt woefully out of place. i, however, am not one to look a gift horse full of champagne in the mouth. so i grabbed a couple and began chatting up the most interesting looking person in the room. mike. a retired NYPD policeman formerly of the 13th precinct, guarding an empty table adorned with pop-culture detritus, now hired to do private security at functions where people like me feel woefully out of place. he was quick to laugh, easy to talk to, and could tell a story that had me alternating between stitches and tears. like a benevolent boxer who knows when to jab with humor and then land a right hook of poignance. (my father taught me how to box, which i had to stop for obvious guitar-hand-related reasons.) i asked him the questions every retired police officer must get: "what's the craziest thing you've ever seen?" "have you ever been shot at?", etc. he said his favorite part of being on the force was being able to help people. starting the healing process. soon enough, he got to telling me about his experience of 9/11. how a female police officer from his precinct was the first to call in that a plane had hit the first tower. how the dispatch said, "what? a train?!" she perished that day while saving new yorker's lives. how, when he and the other men and women in uniform raced down to the towers, pedestrians cheered them on, even chasing their squad cars to throw in water and protein bars. he said that he used to fret about money and retirement plans and 401ks, but that after 9/11, he realized the only thing that mattered is being with the people you love and being happy. so cheers to you, mike. cheers to you all. xx ac

Despite the s/t threatening to eclipse her previous career, I decided to dig out Love This Giant for the first time in a while. And do you know what? It's great! Like really great - well at least the St Vincent songs are.

Optimist is great

Yup, I particularly like that one, and Ice Age is great too.

Two new tracks; so far I prefer "Sparrow" a little, because more primitive & grunty, but "Pieta" 's chorus & rhythm sounds are good also
http://www.wonderingsound.com/listen-2-new-st-vincent-tracks-pieta-sparrow/

i don't really like those tracks, unfortunately. my favorite by her is still "actor" but i think it's because i had a really good listening experience, lost driving through winding wooded roads in bucks county late at night. i drove at a creeping pace because i am terrified of hitting deer over there. the conscientiousness was sort of meditative, and the music facilitated that experience.

Oh, I like these a lot. Actor is my favorite too, but this year's album and these new tracks run a very close second.

Actor has bigger highs but song-for-song the s/t is best.

I'd also rank this one just behind Actor too. Strange Mercy has some unbelievable highs (Surgeon, Cruel, Northern Lights) but last time I listened to it the second half kind of dragged a bit until it got to Year of the Tiger which is an amazing album closer. Marry Me is solid but definitely has that feel of her only hinting at what she's capable of.

Yeah after Marry Me I have a hard time having a favorite, which is mostly a backhanded compliment? They all have highs and lows and none of them 'the best' to me. I think she can still hit a higher note still.

Strange Mercy remains my favorite song of hers.

didn't like Strange Mercy at all (except Cruel)

Bit unfortunate, having the same name as the Bill Murray movie.

odd that she seems to have chosen "give me your loves" as the promotional track for this record (the one she played on letterman etc.). it's one of the strangest, most angular and least immediately likable IMO.

yeah not the best one at all.

it kind of slips over the "pretentious" threshold IMO, something a lot of her songs threaten to do but most don't

Hope she'll do a Deluxe version of this album or the next with a concert DVD. SXSW 2014 set was incredible sound & vision.

She forbids recording at her shows, more successfully than not, or so it seemed before I gave up checking YouTube.

Latest newsletter:

here we go bouncing into a new year. maybe less like a bounce and more like an 80's national lampoon's station wagon with suitcases bulging and strapped to the top. you stop suddenly, and everything comically comes crashing and spilling out in front of you. amid the shuffling and scrambling to shove your unmentionables back into the splayed, cracked cases, you stop for a moment, look at a trinket or talisman of the year past, and remember a real moment. a moment you had forgotten because, in the words of the great david bowie, "my brain felt like a warehouse/it had no room to spare/i had to cram so many things to store everything in there…" right now, a few weeks past an abrupt reckoning%, i am clear-headed, quiet, looking out on a beautiful new zealand day^ and absolutely drowning in the milk of human kindness. thank you for making 2014 the most insane, feral#, and rewarding year of life. wishing everyone everything your heart desires*. xx ac in auckland

%being off tour for the first time in 11 months
^a day which peter jackson himself couldn't have dreamed up any lovelier, and yes, yes…i am BACK on tour
#my mother made me promise not to climb any more scaffolding
*unless you're a psychopath

annie, you're great and i love your music and everything but please quit with all the assumptive Innocent Smoothies 2nd-person monologuing. cheers!

Best Alternative Music Album Grammy Earns More Annie-Type Prose:

2.9.2015

in 2007, i signed to beggars banquet records. i was living in dallas, texas in my childhood bedroom at the time, which i had fashioned into a makeshift studio in order to record some of what would end up being my debut album "marry me."

the first days of touring my own songs and as "st. vincent" are very vivid. in early 2007, in anticipation of the release of my record, my (much beloved) agent put me on the road as solo support for jolie holland and midlake. he saw potential in me, but rightfully, thought i needed to get my live act together. get comfortable playing for people. get road-tested. like most of the rest of my career, it was a trial by earth, wind, and fire.

i was performing solo; just my voice, a guitar through an array of effects pedals, a "stomp board" -- a homemade device i made out of a piece of plywood and a contact microphone that i ran through a bass EQ pedal, and a keyboard. i thought the keyboard looked unmysterious on it's own, so i designed a lighted wooden enclosure to go around it. my brother-in-law helped me build it in his garage. it weighed a gazillion pounds and gave me splinters to carry, and i don't think anyone was under any illusion that there was anything but a keyboard inside it. neither the first nor the last in a series of hilariously ill-fated ideas.

january 2007, i borrowed my father's station wagon and drove 12 hours from dallas to frozen lincoln, nebraska to open for jolie holland (what a voice) at a half-full 150 capacity carpeted club. i believe the compensation was $250/gig but it could have been as much as $500 -- more $ than i'd ever seen for a gig for sure and guaranteed, no less! in my memory, this midwestern jolie tour dovetailed right into opening the midlake tour. they were out in support of their excellent record, "the trials of van occupanther" and were the sweetest good texas boys you could ever hope to meet. the drummer of midlake, mackenzie smith, would later prove to be a great collaborator, playing on actor, strange mercy, and st. vincent.

on this tour, i'd enlisted my dear friend, jamil, to come and sell merch and help do the long drives. we'd just played a show in detroit and while we'd been inside, a blizzard had swept through and covered the stationwagon in snow and ice. it was treacherous. jamil, who always had some incredible hustle going, hired a homeless man named larry to dig the stationwagon out of the snow. (in college, he had a gold lexus, stripped it of the good parts, and resold it. when i asked if he was sad to see it go, he said, "girl, they think they bought a lexus but they bought a corolla.") i'll never forget driving out of bombed out-detroit, apocalyptic at 1 AM. interstate 94 tense and quiet, jamil trying to make sure we didn't crash or stall on the icy road.

i have eaten years of veggie subway sandwiches on highways 10-90, stayed at a super 8 motel behind a kansas federal prison, peed in cups in dressing rooms when there was no bathroom, gotten eaten alive by bedbugs at a cincinnati days inn. i would not trade a single highway or city or moment or person i met for anything. i have loved it all.

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2015/02/StV.jpg

Love an Annie to death but what a weird fucking statement

seems in character: earnest yet clinical, detail-oriented, a little strange

that last one wasn't so bad in a 'started from the bottom(ish), look at me now' kind of way. but i remember the (by far) lowest point of SV's Cambridge showin the UK, with this whole routine where Annie 'supposed' things about the collected histories of the audience: 'When you were young, you used to trap insects and pull their wings off just to see what would happen' (or something like that), and I don't know if it was a cultural misunderstanding but it all fell so flat, with just a few nonplussed giggles coming from an otherwise silent audience.

idgi -- what's weird about that statement? she's just talking about her experiences?

I feel as if she's positioning her former "small-business model" in a negative light in opposition to her current blessed big box indie model. The surprise ending! "I loved it all." Like, if only all my favourite bands could be making $500 a night and staying in motels.

ah ok
that makes sense
bedbugs aren't a one-night only affair either, they'll stowaway in a corner of your bag and follow you forever

I mean

I barely want to have this conversation, I feel unmixed pleasure about her Grammy win. But I have been having larger issues with big biz indie, both as audience and participant, ethically and aesthetically. And as it is difficult for me to discern what is or is not coloured by professional jealousy, I generally save this shit for my lucky therapist.

My personal rule is that if somebody else is setting up your gear for you, you should probably think about breaking up the band. And if there's an in-ear monitor? cancel the tour immediately. Nobody wants to see or hear that.

the homeless man thing was a little weird but meh

we also need a veggie sub rate in order to understand just how many veggie subs she ate! what if the appropriate veggie sub rate that she's referencing is 60 veggie subs per second?! that would be an award worthy number of veggie subs! give her the golden sub!

you folks are harsh

sigh

high standards for the people we love is all

Thanks for reminding me of all the reasons I generally tend to avoid ILM these days, guys. I really needed that.

You're welcome!

I am fine with her not following fgti's personal rules.

my personal rule is that if you normally save shit for your therapist you should continue

These fucking dumb personal rules are for myself, not for anyone else. I suppose it'd be easier to have same conversation about a more-roundly-despised big box indie act.

@ katherine I've been taught to "save it for therapy" most of my life, but I've found it ultimately more beneficial to maintain a social circle that is comfortable with sharing their anxieties

I am not talking about St. Vincent specifically, I am talking about the ugliness of when indie-gets-big-business shows, I have literally had this exact conversation with all possible indictable acts, with responses from "I know how you feel, 200-to-400 people is a perfect-sized crowd and I've been eager to dial it back" to "I don't care what the audience wants, full steam ahead".

Generally I've been "I'm OK, you're OK" about small-business, big-business, it's all good, sell tickets play shows. But reading things like Ian Cohen describing small business models as being rooted in "indie defeatism", to this statement which seems to posit that the current-and-future reality for many indie acts ($250-a-show, Motel 6) is something to be overcome, left behind... it is extremely frustrating to read. Like I wrote e-mails to [band] and [band] when they hired lighting techs and/or monitor engineers to say "don't do it" and they did anyway and lost money on those tours.

i am glad that she is getting paid for what she does and hope that she enjoys every sandwich

pomplamoose have not made it yet

katherine: sick burn on charles mingus there

St. Vincent ‏@st_vincent 1h1 hour ago

S&M&M'S.
0 replies 322 retweets 696 favorites

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_S_bWCXEAA6e7P.jpg

Stereogum ‏@stereogum 11m11 minutes ago

Hear @St_Vincent interview Gang Of Four's Andy Gill http://bit.ly/1FbGwvo

i should know better than to believe internet celeb couple rumours (remember when that frank ocean x miguel rumour got some traction?) but i'm so into the idea of annie & delevingne being gfs

another new track:

http://pitchfork.com/news/58251-st-vincent-shares-teenage-talk-written-for-hbos-girls/

Is it more rigid robot funk?

St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service

A big thanks to everyone who tuned into the first episodes of St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service on Beats1. And thank you to everyone who wrote in with your stories. I sat with a margarita (or two) and my trusty PC (joke, Apple!) and read each of them. I was so moved and wished I could make one for every single person. Alas, time is unmerciful.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that a second round of submissions will be accepted this coming Tuesday, July 14 at 12pm EST/9am PST for one hour. Click HERE to submit.
http://ilovestvincent.com/mixtape/

Xx
ac
(To access previous mixtape playlists and exclusive show content click HERE
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)

Hey St Vincent fans - any recommendations for a newbie to her stuff? I've enjoyed scattered tracks like "Surgeon", "Cheerleader" and "Prince Johnny".

she's got a new one coming out this year, i think. maybe wait and see how it is?

honestly the s/t was the first of hers i've liked and i LOOOOOOOOVE it, so maybe that?

i thought the s/t was more uneven than "strange mercy" but that the highs were higher.

Actor was my gateway. But they're all good.

her last few records are quite different and yet...somehow extremely the same. I'd like to hear her loosen up her arrangements a bit for diversity's sake.

there's a sterility to her records that makes them not stand up to a whole lot of relistening for me even as I admire the craft

otm. I thought s/t was great all the way through, but its consistency makes me more likely to play individual tracks than the whole album

I think all of them after the first one are amazing. The first one is really good but just short of amazing.

Actor is my favourite but I do love all four of her albums in different ways. I think the self titled might be the best introduction to her.

I didn't get into her until "Prince Johnny" convinced me to give the s/t a shot. I liked it quite a bit and still need to go back and listen to the earlier records.

Also, "Teenage Talk," her one-off single from 2015, is really great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7IYosdzUX8

Actor and the S/T album are both great. Not so much a fan of Strange Mercy (other than 'Cruel' which is a great song).

Actor > Strange Mercy > Love This Giant > s/t

never listened much to Marry Me

but it's all great, highy recommend seeing her live if you get the chance

my fav song is the party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9L3D1w8KcY

also this is a good watch if fx you feel like a lump

"Teenage Talk" is the best thing she's ever done, hope album 5 sounds similar (also hope album 5 comes out this year). s/t is her most cohesive album, imo (in the minority that like it better than Strange Mercy).

Niels - That's a great track