Annie
Clark, better known as St. Vincent, knows
how to make odd records. Her 2012 collaboration with David Byrne, Love This Giant, found her screwball approach to deconstructing
rock and pop music blended with rich brass arrangements, Clark's
distinctive voice harmonising with the elder statesman Byrne like a
sort of bewitching counterpoint to the former Talking Head's own
wonky sensibilities.
For
her eponymous fourth album, Clark once
again dips her toe into the strange funk offered up on Love This
Giant, fuses it with dirty electronics and adds in typically
oversized riffs that sound totally out of place on what is
essentially a precision-honed pop record. Those riffs belong on a
Seventies record, filled as they are with garagey jerkiness and hoary
levels of distortion, hovering bluntly and somewhat self-consciously
above squelchy synths and rhythms that could have been borrowed from
a Buck 65 or Money Mark record. Opener 'Rattlesnake' has a bold,
clipped sound filled with unexpected left turns and a smooth
sensuality that really shouldn't work (but does anyway) while
'Digital Witness' - one of the album's strongest tracks - feels like
it should have been part of the Byrne collaboration.
'Prince
Jonny' and 'I Prefer Your Love' are without
question the album's most prominent pop moments, being minor dramas
that sit somewhere between emotional tragedy and the sort of stagey
ballads that have quirky off-Broadway musical written all over them;
these songs are vivid, emotional masterpieces that showcase the
tender heights that Clark's voice can ascend to, as well as
highlighting the filmic realism of her lyrics. Elsewhere 'Birth In
Reverse' offers a skewed New Wave effervescence mixed in with the
sort of clangorous punk riffs that Gang Of Four made their own.
If
St. Vincent put her mind to it, she would be more than capable of
knocking out glossy pop that would show
most chanteuses a thing or two. Instead, she's more comfortable
occupying that weird musical hinterland frequented by Björk and
Polly Scattergood, and the result is much more interesting as a
consequence.
Related: a review I wrote for Clash of St. Vincent and David Byrne at the Roundhouse in London last year can be found here.
St. Vincent was released on 24/02/2014.
Thanks to Matt.
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