Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, is what some would call a workaholic. The 31-year-old art rocker served as a teenage tour assistant for relatives, went on to enroll in and (thankfully) drop out of music school, and has since enjoyed a steady rise in success. Having released five albums since 2007 — including the critically acclaimed Love This Giant with David Byrne in 2012 — and gone on countless tours, it’s fair to say that Annie hasn’t lost firepower.
And I think we should be glad considering Clark is one of today’s most important and most enjoyable artists.
Her sound is amorphous and enigmatic; at times it’s a learned orchestral pop, others it’s a scathing noise rock, and more recently it’s been a metallic, seductive take on funk. Though Clark vacillates on the fringe of accessibility, her messages have always been universal and they’re getting sharper. Like her sometimes collaborator David Byrne, Clark is almost always focused on the macro, be it societal structures (“The Party” and “Cruel”) or world-weariness (“Year of the Tiger”).
Clark starts her fourth and latest record, the self-titled St. Vincent, with one of the best openers in recent memory. On “Rattlesnake,” she crafts an existential narrative founded in an actual encounter with a Texan rattlesnake. Over a New Jack Swing meets funk Bowie groove, Clark asks, “Am I the only one in the only world?” Her voice jumps up on octave when, after hearing a rattle in the brush, she gasps, “I’m not the only one in the only world!” Moments like this, calculated moments that show just how much of a grasp Clark has on her sound, are where St. Vincent really shines. In “Digital Witness,” the aural embodiment of the album’s cover art, Annie plays a cult like figure demanding “all of your mind.” The song takes charged look at digitized technology but Clark is never one to be didactic. Instead, she has a bit of fun with the topic through a sarcastic lens and an ebullient electro-funk groove.
While Clark touched on a more personal sound with 2011’s Strange Mercy, this record goes even further. For remarkably affecting results. Take “I Prefer Your Love,” a candid song written for Clark’s once ill mother. The track never sounds contrived or sappy simply because it’s so human. “Prince Johnny” is another slow jam that showcases Clark’s rock-solid songwriting. Here, she paints a portrait of a well-intentioned but tortured friend struggling to find himself.
Clark’s mentioned that she self-titled the record because it sounds like her. That probably sounds nebulous to some but in listening to St. Vincent I think it becomes clear. Clark is a sometimes confounding character, filled with seemingly contradictory musical and lyrical inclinations, but on St. Vincent she seems to have discovered the perfect medium between euphony and cacophony, optimism and despair.
And in that process of discovery Clark crafted an at times triumphant, at times frightening and always brilliant record.
St. Vincent