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

Strange Mercy is still my favorite

As a non-expert, I agree w those who say she's most compelling as a guitarist, and live: When NPR live-streamed her SXSW around the time of Actor, the very studied approach (they also put up video of rehearsals for the show), of the songwriting, the orchestration the stylized movement, the lights, the hair, the makeup, the costumes, the vocal manner---all worked as a set-up for her gettin' down on the edge of the stage, shredding, for what seemed like quite a while, but not too much---also for instance elsewhere encoring with "Smells Like Teen Spirit"---look around the 'Tube if interested---the whole style-is-content, flash-is-substance, even works pretty well in such instances, I think.

This might expose me as a basic rockist but that video of her covering Big Black's "Kerosene" is still my favorite thing I've seen of hers

I’ve seen her live twice. She’s certainly a better than average guitarist but I also think she has been set up as a kind of standard bearer for Women Who Play Guitar and maybe that’s a burden.

Eh, if anything she makes me think she is simply bored of guitar (see also: Polly Harvey). But guitar or no, Clark clearly, consciously decided she wanted to Do Something Else, and transformed into this whole, affected, performance-art pop ... thing.

I think she's so talented, but has become increasingly exhausting.

She's obviously an immensely talented guitarist at the very least, but I do not like her production style at all and I can't shake the feeling she's not up to much conceptually either

This is pretty much how I feel now. Loved Actor, and I liked Strange Mercy, but sometime around then (can't remember if it was before or after her Byrne collaboration), the red flags started to pop up. I remember one show that was mostly great, but she kept going into these ridiculous long, pre-scripted monologues that kept killing the momentum. I forgot about that after the self-titled album came out - greater than expected and still my favorite. Masseduction was good too but for me it's where things start to go wrong. The thicker, glossier production still worked, but it didn't seem like continuing down that path was going to be a good idea either. Then came the Sleater-Kinney album - not a complete disaster but misguided, and they lost Weiss in the process. It's disappointing, but I hope the new one turns out all right. (I'm not too optimistic based on the single.)

I always had some difficulty squaring the hype about her guitar heroism with what her songs sound like.

The arty stuff gets in the way a bit. The guitar heroism comes out much better live.

^Yes and it’s not necessarily her fault. I think some fans and critics are projecting confused and complicated ideas onto her about how gender relates to virtuosity and guitars.

Xpost

that video of her covering Big Black's "Kerosene" is still my favorite thing I've seen of hers

I like her music across the board but this is my opinion also!

She's putting her guitar through a lot of stuff, iirc, so it might not get recognized as guitar. For example:

In the ad I saw, she was demonstrating some prepared guitar techniques, e.g. approximating a ring modulator by weaving paper through the strings.

But here's a glimpse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vRPmJx8bYs

Here she is running through some riffs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqS5W14crX8

I think what counts as virtuoso guitar has changed a lot in the last few decades.

Hmm. Well, I think she's very creative with her instrument, and can be because she knows it so well, which maybe doesn't count as "virtuoso," per se, but I bet she knows her guitar well enough to play what people *do* typically consider virtuoso. In that clip above, she casually drops in a Steely Dan intro, which, sure, does not necessarily count as virtuoso, but if you can casually do that you know what you're doing, probably.

I think what counts as virtuoso guitar has changed a lot in the last few decades.

I don't like her music or her artistic persona (that whole schtick an album or two ago where she made snarky videos to deflect common interview questions she thought were boring/stupid/beneath her soured me on her pretty much permanently), but the world already has one John Petrucci and doesn't need her to be another.

4m into the first video (which I'm watching second), lol that Noisey guy has never seen artificial harmonics before. The riffs in the 6 riffs video are mostly beginner-level, which is maybe the point of the video; I do think she is capable of harder things than "Aqualung" and gets a lot of interesting sounds, although I'm not really seeing a case yet that she gives Mary Halvorson a run for her money. What I meant, though, was that guitar heroism doesn't seem that central to the appeal of the songs that I hear so it seems odd that people seem to stress it as much as I see them do. (I've seen comparisons to Eddie Van Halen, Thurston Moore, and Tom Verlaine, all of whom foreground instrumental guitar work a lot more ime). I did like Actor well enough btw and I'm glad to see someone doing prepared guitar in pop music.

Nobody’s arguing that she needs to be a poodle shredder. Virtuosity in an art rock context is more like Belew with Talking Heads or Fripp with Bowie. She’s good but she’s not that. And again, she’s not saying she’s a virtuoso, my issue here is with the commentary around her that seems overwrought and pleading to me.

Again, xpost.

Oh yeah I've seen a Belew comparison too which um

snarky videos

(sorry for NME link): https://www.nme.com/news/music/st-vincent-interview-kit-videos-2134085

She is an extremely versatile and creative guitarist but it’s not clear until you watch her play live, imo.

I think it's less that people think she's a virtuoso because the notion of virtuosity has changed, and more people think she's a virtuoso because not that many people know or understand guitar, and there are relatively few younger people famous *for* playing guitar that seeing anyone play a guitar might as well be "virtuoso." But, sure, like Belew she is so clearly into her own thing that there's really not a lot of comparisons to what she's up to, which is one advantage of sounding weird or different.

Can Matt Sweeney play? I have no idea, he's always in bands though.

Anyway, she's a hundred times better than I'll ever be, so virtuoso enough for me! Still find her exhausting, though.

That’s what I’m saying though. The meaning of virtuosity has changed because the average music fan understands guitar less. I’m not even complaining about it really. Except in a sad suburban guitar playing dad way.

Virtuoso FX pedal stomper.

pff, when she plays I pay attention and I want to hear more, idgaf whether it's virtuosic or pedal filtered

TBF to Clark, I never get the feeling something like this could happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dZwXnMrRU
(Bill Bailey's U2 bit)

https://townsquare.media/site/838/files/2021/02/stvincent-whosyourdaddy.jpg
A different aesthetic for each album isn't necessarily a dealbreaker - I wouldn't be a Bowie fan if it was - but this looks like it'll be all-style-no-substance to the point of it almost being an ad campaign for bourbon. And yes the elephant in the room is 'Young Americans' but Bowie released that album in the 70s, worked with many of the pre-eminent musicians in that genre, and was genuinely into that music - whereas this feels like copping an aesthetic.

Also that fucking ad copy: the artist who makes you expect the unexpected
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/e7/84/35e784330597d07f55accb1702518589.jpg
"No-one makes you expect the unexpected!"

Actually St Vincent's suit fits about as well as those priest robes. What's up with the tailoring on that jacket? Also flares are tight at the top and wide at the bottom. Those trouser look more like something the singer in an early 90s shoegaze band would wear.

If it's an album of glistening guitars perhaps she has gone shoegaze

as I paste this link of her new song into this text box, I have already forgotten what this song sounds like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4cytdNY8Cw

Oh goody, finally an album with lazier lyrical cliches than Lou Reed's 'Rock and Roll Heart'.

At least Lou was actually a drug addict so he could speak with authority on heroin'n'benzos'n'shit. So far this St Vincent album sounds like the musical equivelent of a 'Live Laugh Love' poster in the living room of the straightest person you know.

Doing the whole "lyrics about other musicians who are better than you" thing makes me think maybe St. Vincent would be a fitting frontperson for Nirvana.

Everybody in the youtube comments seems ecstatic about it though, as well as on the popheads and indieheads subreddits. Maybe we're the baddies, idk.

it sounds better than her last album but also totally forgettable

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MByUaGiR2Z8

Eh for first song on SNL - Pay Your Way in Pain

it was all too period piece schtick without strong enough songs to make it work - St V in her 1970s clothes with her soulful Black background singers. Not bad but not great either.

my wife haaaated it on the same grounds. I was more forgiving, this kind of image-roleplaying stuff no longer seems as impactful as it did in the 70's or 80's when Bowie and others did it, it def. comes across as a gimmick, but it also doesn't bother me that much. but I would have liked the songs to be a little stronger.

The problem I have with image/aesthetic is that if the songs are good then it doesn't matter what the artist is wearing - they could be wearing a potato sack. If the songs are really amazing you're not even going to notice. But if the songs aren't good enough then a deliberate stylised image seems to highlight the deficiencies in the music.
It reminds me of some interview advice I got from a colleague. They said that I should wear a red tie in an interview "so that you stand out and the interviewer remembers you". The colleague meant well but even at the time I thought that if that was the only reason I got hired then it probably meant I wasn't very suitable for the role, and that a better strategy would be to impress in the interview with my suitability for the job.
There were a lot of glam rock era bands who looked the business but whose music wasn't exciting enough. On the other hand there were bands who were really good but looked comically fuck-awful (Slade to the point where the Reeves & Mortimer parody is basically them pretending to be Slade with slightly exaggerated Brummie accents). And there's the whole 'The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years' thing of hair bands spending more time picking out clothes then they did writing songs.
One other thing, if you're going for a particular look then commit to it. St Vincent looks like she's wearing a party shop wig. And it's back to Bowie again but even when he was a teenager pretending to be a Mod he put in more effort.

St Vincent looks like she's wearing a party shop wig.

Yeah, but this is half the point. It's part of the ancient aesthetic strategy of drawing attention to the fact that you're "wearing a costume" / "playing a role" by doing it badly and obviously, on purpose. I think it's cowardly, confusing insincerity with irony and giving the performer a way of distancing themselves from the thing they're attempting, so they've got an out if it fails, but it's very common in super-white indie music.

this is the best thread on ilm

"saint joni ain't no phony / smoking reds where furry sang the blues"

godawful

sorry to add to the pile-on

I'm listening to "The Melting of the Sun" and wondering if this is her take on the Lana Del Rey aesthetic

I just started paying attention to the lyrics and I would like to set my face on fire

still not feeling her music/schtick. then again I haven't really checked her releases. was turned off by her 2014 SNL performance in which she did some stage moves that looked copped from Mick Karn.
second half here: https://vimeo.com/133923846
too cutesy and mannered/studied by half.