REVIEW: "Masseduction" by St. Vincent

Annie Clark tries to pogo 
the sadness away on new album.

     For a few weeks I couldn’t find anything about St. Vincent’s new album, Masseduction. Her fifth album was to be the follow-up to 2014's self-titled, a perfectly sculpted set of songs that brought new awareness, critically and commercially, to St. Vincent and headmistresses, Annie Clark. How could one of the year’s most anticipated releases not be searchable? Simple. Because when I looked at the title I saw, Mass e d u c a t i o n. An art-rock album about the dangers of state-sanctioned curriculum? Alright. Whatever you say. Eventually I squinted and figured it out. Clark has said the confusion of the title was a benefit because she wanted a very fluid meaning. Cheeky girl.

     Musically, Masseduction works in the same room as self-titled. She recorded with Jack Antonoff, currently one of pop music's main men, so there's an electric punch to every track, but the sound remains the same. The incense smoke of recent collaborator David Byrne still lingers. Big funky drums, horns and tempos that pick you off the chair. But Clark also finds sad melodies to tarnish the flame of love lost. Don't ever fall for a model, subtext, [famous person]. She hurts here, too.

      “Hang On Me” lurks into the room to start the album. It’s a drunken waltz of a song. Clark sings her heart raw over bruised keyboards, trying to will a lover to stay put. “Pills” is the two-step marching ode to pharmaceuticals. Clark makes catchy a list of all the prescriptions needed to make a society run and function in peak modern times.

     One thing we don't have yet is a pill that makes you play guitar like Clark. Her unhinged playing continues to be a strong highlight on the album, following the distorted carnage of St. Vincent. The wordplay continues with, “Los Ageless,” about the tightly manicured lifestyles of the city its title mocks. And boy, is it seduuuuuctive. An outright cold slap in the face. Clark sings of candy-colored regret as she tries “to write you a love song.”

      The album title track is far and away the best song here. Clark finds an earworm singing, “I can’t turn off what turns me on” -- a phrase we should all live by. It’s a noisy guitar-ladened crush of a pop song. Clark whimpers in sexual grievance and the bass slaps down with heat. 

     In an instant the first tones of "New York" sound like it's a beauty. In big orchestral waltzes Clark sings about old times on the NYC grid and how people always seem to be on the move. On “Fear the Future” she seeks answers like she’s standing defiant before the man behind the curtain as a techno-lazered beat drills from start to finish. Rated song most likely to blow the festival crowd up. “Smoking Section” is a dramatic piano ballad where she contemplates suicide as retribution, but submits, hopelessly, to love.

      Masseduction is filled with exciting songs and Clark finds a new quivering low in her tone, but it's not nearly as solid start to finish, as St. Vincent. It's a mere half-step from that album, but easily ranks as one of the best put out in 2017. 

source: https://imp

REVIEW: "St. Vincent" by St. Vincent

Annie Clark hustles and bustles on St. Vincent

     Love an album that steps right into it.

     The self-titled fourth album from St. Vincent, or the girl also known as Annie Clark, picks up right where 2011's Strange Mercy left off with opener, "Rattlesnake." It surges ahead with grooves contorting and billowing from all angles. The beats are jacked-up and burbling as Clark takes her clothes off with no one around. Her voice is distressed and manic. She's sweating, sweating and by the end of this album, so too will you.

     With St. Vincent, released this week, Clark is quickly becoming a must-hear artist of any genre. She is joyfully weird with a voice broaching levels of ecstasy and devilment. She is frisky and sassy, but also a true master of the axe. Nearly everything on the album is enveloped in the light fuzz of distortion and it pinches the back of the neck until the drool flows.

     On "Birth In Reverse," the first released song, Clark's guitar does the Slip 'N' Slide. The tempo is locked into a rushing run, like a frantic, cinematic chase sequence through New York City. She's slipping over the hood of a taxi cab, diving left towards David Byrne’s house, bursting the ambling crowds like flocks of pigeons. Like most of this album, it’s very busy, but never overcrowded.

     As a lyricist, Clark trades comfort for mischief, unafraid to bend a sentence around the sound exterior. “Remember the time we went and snorted / That piece of the Berlin Wall that you’d extorted,” she sings, pure of heart, on "Prince Johnny." Her voice goes off on flight, reflecting on a smitten, but lost and deranged lover.

     Since her last album, Clark snuck in a collaboration with Byrne, the full-length Love This Giant. The pairing was perfect. The rhythms of St. Vincent are a direct trickle from the Talking Heads' reservoir. "Digital Witness," could have stemmed from those same recording sessions. It's a solid piece of funk with flatulating horns and a mind-tugging chorus.

     "Huey Newton" starts with a space-rock shuffle, then becomes a fractal explosion. Clark sounds like Alison Mosshart fronting Black Sabbath two hits from the crack pipe. Some of the crustiest, filthiest, wubbiest guitar ever break down the walls between the right and left speakers. The closer, "Severed Cross Fingers," is as lush as it is triumphant, the perfect lolling end to a bustling modern classic.

     Not only is Annie Clark, without any doubt, one of the great guitarists making current music, but she puts her talent to the most creative of uses, never settling to go straight. She loves to throw her sound into total disarray just to pick it back up. She nearly melts the recording studio down on "Bring Me Your Loves" with an onslaught of scuzz.

     Her penchant for experimenting with metallic textures and psychotic song structures gives her music a desperate need for return. She pushes the limits of what’s expected in a song and for that her name deserves to roll off the same tongue as Bjork, PJ Harvey, Erykah Badu, Laurie Anderson, the beautifully supernatural women of rock.

     On "Digital Witness" Clark sings, "I want all of your mind / gimme all of your mind." By the conclusion of St. Vincent it’s already in her lap.

Key Tracks: "Digital Witness," "Huey Newton," "Prince Johnny," "Birth In Reverse"

from: IMP