“Surgeon”
from the album Strange Mercy
2011
iTunes
A couple of Annie Clark’s recent live performances under her St. Vincent moniker included covers of Big Black’s “Kerosene” and “Big Black Mariah” by Tom Waits. There’s a neat thematic link there, not just in the leap from one Big Black to the other, but also in her decision to remodel the work of artists who construct alluringly grotesque worlds out of basic “rock” tools. The best St. Vincent material does that, too. Here on “Surgeon,” our first taste of the forthcoming Strange Mercy (Sept. 13), everything feels a little fidgety and queasy. It starts plainly enough, with plenty of sighs and a great plume of vaporous keyboard sound cresting across Clark’s vocal. The anxiety kicks in a third of the way through, with a jerky loop pitched restlessly against the rest of the song, causing the rhythm to appear like it’s lurching off-beam.
That capacity for apprehension and nausea only builds as the track becomes more densely layered. At one point a great sway of swooning strings are introduced, making it feel like your feet are toppling across the slippery deck of a boat sailing through the high seas. Clark ups the intensity in her vocal as the track progresses, seeming frantic as she cycles through its two-line chorus for the last time. Then, just when you think you’ve got a handle on where this is all heading, we’re plunged deeper into the song’s contorted funk undertow via a kinetic keyboard solo, which climaxes like 2,000 volts of electricity surging under your skin. It’s a powerful, cerebral comeback that bodes well for the world she’s steeped in on Strange Mercy.