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

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

everything she does sounds like prince to me

Her videos are really good at complementing her songs. I think part of the reason I liked Cruel so much was cos of the video.

i've only listened to this new album a few times, but it's clicking a lot more now than it has in the past. i'm hearing tori amos* + fripp.

(*tori amos if her choirgirl hotel era was more interesting and varied and better-produced than it actually was.)

challlllllllops

Incredible, intense London show last night. Thrilling cover of She Is Beyond Good and Evil.

(*tori amos if her choirgirl hotel era was more interesting and varied and better-produced than it actually was.)

nooooooooooooooooooooooo way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

like none at all at all. i only listened to the st vincent album a couple of times but certainly in terms of range it's got nothing on choirgirl - even in terms of arrangements tori's a million times more varied, and that's before you get into the amount of genres FTCH covers.

The 90s Tori stan awakes.

Lex, have you heard the Actor album from 2009? I'd suggest checking it out before you dismiss St Vincent outright. Personally found that album a lot more enjoyable than this recent one.

'tori + fripp' kind of works

lexxx i don't know if i have any interest particularly in trying to talk you into liking st. vincent but i don't think breadth of sound and genre is what her last two records are going for at all?

neither did i - i've tried st vincent and it wasn't for me, i was just taking issue with the tori comparison

i didn't really hear any tori in st vincent tbh

a particular way of deploying their high registers strategically? i think there's a resemblance more on the line of one or two common tricks rather than a similarity in the grand shape of their projects. (which is true of the comparison to robert fripp as well obv)

although i would probably rather hear annie clark cover 'in the court of the crimson king' than i would 'cornflake girl#

i didn't really hear any toriesque bloodnguts viscera in annie clark. or any of the wails in the higher register. idk that st vincent album was so low-key charisma-wise, i didn't like her arrangements or production at all but her personality didn't exactly bust through them like tori's would.

Hmm, bloodnguts viscera is exactly the impression I got from her show last night. I hate the "you have to see x live" argument — obviously you won't want to bother if you're not a fan — but the way she swings between vulnerability and violence is gripping. Not that I'd compare her to Tori myself, but I think she has charisma in spades.

Yeah, I'm surprised at what Lex is saying really, and agree with thomp and DL - this is has a lot of character to it - something very frail yet hugely defiant about her sound and lyrics. That video for Cheerleader, where she's gigantic and tied up as a museum exhibit, tries to break the shackles but crumbles to dust, is a perfect representation of her sound. It's like that moment just before you feel as though you're about to have an emotional breakdown and you're trying to keep it together. "You show up with a black eye/Looking to finish the fight/Paint the black hole blacker" is about as much blood'n'guts viscera as it gets really...

yeh she don't sing it like she means it tho. it's like an exercise in songwriting and by the same token it's not dead-eyed stina style deadpan either.
was so pleased my "strange mercy" was faulty. i couldn't conscionably have it knocking about the house.
she writes a corkin' good refrain but can't link them up or develop them adequately to write a good (let alone great) song which is an awful, crying shame. given "marrow" was pretty much flawless, but she needs a producer who will tell her "no, go back and write it again", rather than fleshing out half-arsed sequenced up demos in a cluttery mush of production. eg "Cruel", "swoon"-part, "riff"-part, connected by "drivel"-part (even the riff needs to go up 3 semitones on the last stroke - it disappoints me that my memory of the song is better than the actual song). "chloe in the afternoon" STORMs in, in a prince style, and to my mind doesn't fall apart through design but through not taking the optimum compositional decisions. and so on, and so on. undeserving of the foisted elevation she receives for lack of anything better being offered. the attempted lionization is wish fulfilment

This is all down to a matter of taste, but I think the whole "structures falling apart" is what makes her sound unique. I do much prefer Actor to Strange Mercy, but it's the ever-so-slightly skewed quality, the uneasiness of her sound that makes it what it is.

I thought immediately of St. Vincent vs. Tori b/c they both have the song "Cruel", with a similar sentiment.
Disgree on the Fripp comparison // splitting hairs // Annie is Adrian Belew, in tone, in performance, even in lyrical bent.
There is a selfish part of me that only wants to hear Annie making music in the vein of her Rapeman/Pop Group covers

problem is it's crap-structures-falling-apart.
the refrains are GRAND, but she doesn't know what to do with them. these songs could be so much better and that is what i find so enormously frustrating.

gawd, tori's "cruel" is so much better it's ridiculous, the production and rhythm are so insane on it

like, MARIMBAS

get back to me when annie clark starts using marimbas and whistles in her songs