St. Vincent - a.k.a. Annie Clark;

i find it hard to hear anything she's produced as messy: if anything it's all fussy/neat/antiseptic (choose one)

it seems inevitable-in-retrospect that she'd get into analogue synth (n.b. this is not a complaint)

on one listen the songs struck me more as More Competent Songs In Annie Clark Idiom than as anything great or surprising, though one assumes that'll become more nuanced once i've heard it a little more. but the first time i listened to her seriously was listening to 'actor' a lot a few months ago, so it's a little too close, maybe.

"Strange Mercy" itself is such a fantastic song. I find that the fuzz and squelch - especially when married with how simple and elegant the melodies and songwriting are - is one of my favorite things about her overall sound.

Five tracks in and it's breaking my heart to hear such a lovely voice being wasted in the service of such useless deliberate indie shambolism. That enormous fuzzy bass noise she uses on everything is horrible.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:12 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Too many annoying Fiery Furnaces style "ooh look at me" tangents as well.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:15 PM (1 week ago)

Production and arrangement-wise it sounds like a carefully studied mess.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:29 PM (1 week ago)

on board w/ Matt DC, i played this a couple days back & can't say it really grabbed me at all.

9.0

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15813-strange-mercy/

I don't hear shambolic here at all.

I'm listening to Chloe In The Afternoon again and the production and the arrangement is just horrible, that guitar line and those drums just trampling across everything only just in time with everything. It's either been arranged by someone completely inept or, more likely, she's made a deliberate decision to reframe the song with such jarring elements. And I'm totally down with that being her aesthetic decision and I usually like it when people do that but really the results just sound like shit here.

that guitar line and those drums just trampling across everything only just in time with everything

matt dc makes unconscious effort to make this sound more awesome than i will probably finally think it is

Unfortunately it's neither a good guitar line nor good drums.

the final song on this album is so beautiful

i'm kind of confused by what definition of 'in time' we're using that this incredibly sequenced-sounding and somewhat metronomic drum beat could possibly be 'only just in time' with the incredible sequenced-sounding rest of the track

a 'friend' of mine wrote a 'review' of the radiohead 'album' 'the king of limbs' on his 'blog' (i wasn't sure where i wanted my sarcastic air quotes in that sentence so i just went with all the options) where he was like OH MY GOD THAT PHIL SELWAY IS SUCH A MACHINE HOW DOES HE PLAY IN ALL THESE DIFFERENT WAYS ALL THE TIME ON ALL THESE TRACKS HE'S INHUMAN HE SOUNDS ALMOST PROGRAMMED and it's like c'mon. c'mon dude. think about it

also: incredibly, again, not incredible, oops

I know it's a drum machine ffs. It's that it sounds sloppy and only-just-in-time when paired with the guitar line. Pretty sure the effect is intentional.

i'm worried about listening to this album. I thought Actor was one of the best and most persistently enjoyable records of recent times, and I really hope this doesn't fuck things up.

I've refrained from commenting so far becuase the CD's not arrived yet and I've only listened to a downloaded version a couple of times on the iPhone while walking around town, but there's nothing to worry about. I'm not sure it's as good as Actor (although that took a long time to really worm its way into my affections), but even so, I'm confused by Matt's dislike of the opening track and other stated issues.

I don't think it is a drum machine. There's a drummer credited on the album and a lot of the parts sound 'human', it's just that they've been processed to sound electronic and quantised to get that robotic quality. I really like that approach - it's a smart way of combining electronic sounds with 'live' playing, and it complements her use of synth bass and weird compressed guitar fuzz.
Chloe is a bold opener, a development of the jarring rhythms of Marrow. Not the most immediate of tracks, but fantastic once it gets under your skin. At first I felt the album wasn't as good as Actor, but it's really sunk in now. It's just different, with more of a soul and r 'n b influence.

Another example of what I'm talking about is the drum beat on Strange Mercy, where one drum comes in a fraction late on the third beat of the bar. It's obviously a conscious decision, and if it is a drum machine then it's actually been programmed like that. There's a sort of studied sloppiness that you hear a fair bit in American indie (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors etc) that always annoys me, partly because I always imagine the artists think they're being terribly clever when they do it.

Like, the rest of Strange Mercy is beautiful and floaty and feels like it needs a lot more room to breathe. I understand straightjacketing it in a robotic beat but being so deliberately messy feels like it just goes against the grain of the song for no apparent reason. I'm all for sloppiness in music when it makes everything feel spontaneous but this is the exact opposite.

I listened to this again and it's so frustrating because it's a great voice and a collection of good-to-great songs with a load of irritating production quirks getting in the way. The best songs here - Cruel, Champagne Year, the first 2/3rds of Surgeon, avoid that.

I really like that approach - it's a smart way of combining electronic sounds with 'live' playing, and it complements her use of synth bass and weird compressed guitar fuzz.

Hah, this is the bit I hate. See also the lumpy "I, I, I..." passage that leads up to the chorus of Cheerleader.

I can see how it might seem lumpy, but I like the jarring bits. They rub up against the smoothness. I like going against the grain of the song. Doesn't always work, granted, but with St Vincent it keeps things interesting. I don't think of DP or SV as studiedly sloppy though. SV is a fan of J Dilla, who is famous for his use of unquantised beats to add a certain 'liveness' or looseness to proceedings, and there's a similar impulse here. What's wrong with placing a beat a fraction late? Real musicians do that all the time, so why can't machines?

Good drummers don't intentionally come in that far late though. And I don't see why you'd want to do that to a beat that's otherwise incredibly stiff and rigid next to the rest of the song, unless you were trying to be intentionally jarring.

Anyway, I've made my point, I'll shut up now.

I like that kind of stuff on st vincent records -- and agree w/sentiment above that they "keep it interesting" (maybe as much for her as us). Love the "I, I, I" part too. The only thing that really *bothers* me about the record is the unfortunate sequencing of Cheerleader to Surgeon, with the latter beginning in the same key and the same *note* as the "I, I, I" from the former. pet peeve, I guess

But it's encouraging that she makes music which might otherwise be a really easy fit for a hell of a lot of people...but retains little idiosyncratic bits that keep it from becoming that. If i said such things, I'd say "you go girl!" but thank goodness I don't.

she did go to berklee

totally feeling the unquantized beats and blending of live/cut-up/programmed drums, of course. i think i have to get this record.

it's so frustrating because it's a great voice and a collection of good-to-great songs with a load of irritating production quirks getting in the the way

There's no shortage of consensual classics that initially elicited this sort of response. I don't know just how I feel about Surgeon yet, bits are perilously close to sucumbing to the Bjork disease of mannerism and meandering melody banishing pop hooks. But the production quirks are just another decades indie music zeitgeist.

LOL start to her interview at The AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/articles/st-vincent,61763/

The A.V. Club: Sorry, I dialed in a little early, so I eavesdropped on the tail-end of your last interview. Sounded like that got a little awkward.

Annie Clark: Oh, well, the “gender question.” Yeah. The funny thing for me about it is, it’s always such a non-question. The question is—well, there is no question. The statement is, “You’re a woman.”

AVC: So other than being a woman, how are you?

A lot of her stuff, from the first album and second, at least - I haven't heard the new one yet - reminds of so much of late '70s/early '80s Bowie, where the studio is used to give the music this processed, almost robotic feel, especially the drums, which can sound rigid and mechanical until there's a really nutty fill or some other organic intrusion St. Vincent seems to tread that same illusory antiseptic line, sort of accenting the humanness, for lack of a better term, in the midst of all the precision and hyper-arrangement.

Sorry for the grammar. I did that on purpose so that you know this post was written by a human.

I've given this a quick listen, and so far I say Classic!!

No one I know of sounds anything like Annie Clark. She finds this line between harmony and discord - pretty melodies that threaten to tumble into chaos. Hair-raising pop songs dented and bruised by potholes and sheer cliff drops. But Annie always sounds so defiant, brittlely so, like someone who's had enough of tumbling and is going to stand up on her own two feet no matter what.

As for the snare on Strange Mercy, I hear it, and yeah it's deliberate - but it wouldn't be as interesting a track without it. I love it. Her habit of making you anticipate what will happen next, and then doing something different to what you expect (like that ever-so-slightly late snare). You're forced to play this kind of mental three-legged-race with her. And yeah, if you let it jar you, it will. Not everyone likes or wants to feel "challenged" (for want of a better word) by music. I find Fiery Furnaces incredibly frustrating to listen to most of the time as well. But somehow St. Vincent's approach sounds thought-through, pre-mediated, reasoned - her fractured, imperfect internal logic displaying the fragility and determination in her songs. FF often sound like they're just writing tracks bar-by-bar, throwing in random key and tempo changes just for the sake of it. Chances are, on relistening to these tracks in a couple of months' time these'll sound quite natural and not at all jarring.

Cruel is my favourite so far - like a Gilbert and Sullivan production covered by Electrelane in Blondie pastiche mode.

The way she sings 'cruel' but it sounds like 'cry' - don't know I that's intentional. In my mind I always think of the cover of Actor and that photo kind of sums up her music perfectly - pretty in an uncanny valley way; she has the look of someone recovering from a domestic argument or some similar hyper-emotional experience.

Im not hearing the 'guitar virtuosity'. She's not doing anything a million metalhead teenagers couldn't do. Not that guitar virtuosity is everything, but they keep hyping her 'shredding'. I mean, she's a good songwriter and everything, that should be enough.

A teenage metalhead could probably technically play the parts, but I doubt he'd come up with them, unless they were big fans of Robert Fripp and the Zvex Fuzz Factory. She's not really about super fast shredding, although I'm sure she's capable of that. She's a really inventive player, and she can certainly kill it live.

Listened again on the way into work this morning. It didn't quite have the same effect on me as last night, but then that might all be a question of context - some things just sound better at night on your home system than on headphones on a busy train. I don't think it's quite beating out Actor yet, but certain moments are splendid and as a whole I've no complaints.

LIVIN IN FEAR IN THE YEAR OF THE TIGER

Are people still digging this? It kind of faded quickly for me, although I think "Cruel" is one of the best songs this year.

I'm feeling this as a slowly-unfurling grower, much like Actor, which I enjoyed more and more as I got to know it.

I'm still playing this a lot, a strong contender for album of the year even though a lot of times I skip the first track.

NPR is streaming her DC show tonight: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/28/141801564/live-tuesday-st-vincent-in-concert?ps=mh_frhdl1

Covering the Pop Group - She is Beyond Good and Evil on Kimmel

Cru-u-uelllll....

She's very striking in person. Amazingly vivid eyes. And she can fucking play. Best live guitar player I've seen in ages, if not ever.

does it come through on the records in places i'm missing? i like her albums a lot, but i'm not hearing the amazing guitar solo parts i expect, given what i hear about her virtuosity.

I think the live show I saw a few weeks back was pretty amazing, precisely because of the guitar playing. I think on record it's all smoothed out a bit.

definitely. love her live but i can mostly take or leave the records.

^ OTM

xpost Sometimes it's hard to hear her guitar playing on the record because, like Fripp or Belew or whomever, it doesn't always sound like a guitar. But live you get to see what she's up to.

I've had a lot of trouble with this record, even as a fan, because "Cruel" is such a good song but it comes so early in a relatively difficult album. I always turn it off (or tune it out) after "Cruel," even though I know it's good.

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/11/13/some-thoughts-on-st-vincent-and-women-in-music/

Funny thing No.1:

My six year old son asked me this morning whether Strange Mercy was Kate Bush's new album.

Funny thing No.2:

Before she came on stage the other night they were playing Here Comes the Warm Jets and as Baby's on Fire came on it suddenly dawned on me how alike to Fripp Annie Clarke's guitar playing is.

Was that before or after my post four inches above here? ;)

They played Baby's On Fire after house lights came up on Friday! Her choice? She is very Fripp.

New vid casts her as a Ron Mueck sculpture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEY9GJAm8bA