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

Top 5 Releases

2014 has very easily been the best year for music, at least since The White Stripes were still active. Spoon, Ryan Adams, TV On The Radio, Aphex Twin and Interpol all returned with strong releases after a few quiet years. Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Pink Floyd all added to their legendary discographies. But, more than anything it was a phenomenal year for women making music.

   R&B’s hypnotism launched further into space with the work from FKA Twigs, SZA, Jhene Aiko and Azealia Banks. Warpaint, Dum Dum Girls, Marissa Nadler and St. Vincent all made stunningly next-level records, while White Lung, Priests and Perfect Pussy chimed in with quick-burning records fronted by spit-fire, acid-tongued leading ladies. Everyone experimented and stepped just to the left of their sound. It was a year of wild transcendence for many musicians. Music was rich in 2014. Here are my Top 5 of 2014. Taken from: Independent Music Promotion’s annual list of the Top Releases of 2014.

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#5

El Pintor by Interpol

The black-clad doom-groovers of New York City returned with their fifth album, El Pintor, this year. Interpol parted ways with bassist Carlos Dengler at the finalization of their 2010 self-titled album. Paul Banks and company rebounded without bothering to fill in Dengler’s place. Banks took over duties on bass for the recording and the group soldiered on to create an album as good as their debut, Turn On The Bright Lights, released over a decade ago. “Breaker 1,” “Anywhere” and “Everything Is Wrong” charge ahead with the rhythm section’s angry brood. Banks’ voice coils around the looping guitar crescendos with anguish and disappointment. “All The Rage Back Home,” “My Blue Supreme,” and “Same Town New Story” are three of Interpol’s greatest songs, each built with tunneling song structures where, at any turn, the fragments of one’s heart might scrape off and disappear. El Pintor is the soundtrack of every empty skyscraper in New York City tonight. [Full review]

#4

Ryan Adams by Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams’ fourteenth, self-titled solo album is an album of stark, minimalist, pure-hearted rock’n’roll. The guitars are lean, stripped bare and fall in line with the rhythm section. The melodies are catchy and each song follows a basic verse-chorus-verse structure. Adams wades into territory just slightly left of his usual countrified sound. Gone is the country twang from his work with the Cardinals. His voice is more subdued, mushier. On “Kim” Adams deals with the sight of an old flame moving on with somebody else. The guitars latch onto the constant pounding of a snare and each line is bittersweet. Other times he sounds dejected and spiteful. “I don’t love you anymore,” he sings on “Am I Safe, “I just want to sit here and watch you burn.” “My Wrecking Ball” is the quiet folk tune Adams perfected on Heartbreaker and Gold over a decade ago. Ryan Adams is Adams’ best since 2005’s 29. [Full review]

#3

Deep Fantasy by White Lung

Deep Fantasy, by punk-Canadians White Lung, starts with a blaring ring like the oncoming warning of a missile as it enters enemy airspace. Vocalist Mish Way’s shrieks bleat against the punk crush and wailing sonic blast on opener “Drown With The Monster.” Way is powered by the onslaught from Kenneth William’s guitar, Anne-Marie Vassiliou’s drums and Hether Fortune’s bass as they go on to pulverize ten songs for 22 minutes. Deep Fantasy is the band’s third album. The carnage of White Lung is real. When they play live the band’s sound explodes from shitty amplifiers and Way releases the tension of the record with the ecstatic gymnastics of a front woman in charge of her aspirations. Press play then find cover. [Full review]

#2

Z by SZA

Z is technically an EP–SZA’s third–but it stretches out over ten songs and for forty minutes your mind is given all the fuel it needs to power each song for days after. The stoned songbird yawns, meditates then levitates in her colorful R&B prism, singing about headless Barbie dolls, Street Fighter and bumpin’ that Jadakiss. She’s concocted a sugary sweet sound with the all trappings of neo-soul and hip-hop, but with the foggiest of guidelines. SZA has kept her musical palette open, safeguarding her from ever being pigeonholed. Chance The Rapper slithers in a melancholic verse on the watery “Child’s Play,” while Kendrick Lamar punctures holes through “Babylon.” For the hypnotically lush “Sweet November” SZA twists Marvin Gaye’s “Mandota.” Her proper, debut album, A, is due for a release in 2015. If SZA’s first three EP’s were merely creative flicks of the wrist, I can’t wait to hear a whole hip thrust.

#1

St. Vincent by St. Vincent

There is no album that more succinctly wraps up the emotions of our digital existence than St. Vincent’s fourth, self-titled album. Annie Clark, the brains behind the music, vows to never settle for going straight. One of the greatest guitarists currently making music, she has progressed her sound by leaps and bounds since 2011’s Strange Mercy. Clark loves to throw a song into total disarray only to pick it back up like she does with “Bring Me Your Loves.” She can also write a straight-forward ballad straight from her pumping heart as evidenced by “I Prefer Your Love.” 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.

   Clark is joyfully weird on St. Vincent. Her confidence allows her voice to breach levels of ecstasy and devilment. Her penchant for experimenting with metallic textures and psychotic song structures gives her music an urgency, like it’s trying to constantly fake you out. 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. The earth should be so lucky. [Full review] [Live review]

The Honorables: July by Marissa Nadler / Syro by Aphex Twin / LP1 by FKA Twigs / The Best Day by Thurston Moore / Amphetamine Ballads by The Amazing Snakeheads

St. Vincent at Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Annie Clark performs in Prospect Park August 9, 2014. All photos by Eli Jace.

It is fifteen years, two-hundred and twenty-one days into the 21st Century. August 9, 2014. St. Vincent -- that’s Annie Clark in Brooklyn -- stands in the shadows of the Celebrate Brooklyn! stage in Prospect Park. She comes to take aim at our fractured, disseminated digital lives and hold our focus for one night.

As Clark stands in the dark an electro-computer voice reads a disclaimer. Please refrain from capturing the concert with all digital devices. I snapped two quick blurred images, posted one to Twitter and felt horrible about myself. 

The show was the finale to Celebrate Brooklyn!'s free summer concert series and was easily the most anticipated. The line to enter curled around and past the park. At the entrance, signs warned of the use of strobe lights--always a positive sign.

Clark's form came into view as the strobe lights sputtered for the opening fuzz of "Rattlesnake." She stood straight and defiant dressed in black stockings, black leather skirt and a white button-down top. When the solo came, she rocked up and down like she was blowing in the wind. Her frazzled newsprint-colored fluff of hair shimmered and her high cheekbones reflected each flash of light like a shield.

The song opens St. Vincent, Clark’s fourth album, released early this year. The album is sure to fit at the top of every year-end best-of list. The setlist was heavy with new songs and ones from Strange Mercy from 2011. Further back, off Actor, “Marrow” and "Actor Out of Work," a tightly wound chunk of krautrock, showed up early in the first half.

Clark’s four-member band was impressively locked in. The colorful arrangements of the recordings were expertly re-contextualized on the stage. Songs were kept mostly intact as heard on record, but there were pockets left open wide for improvisation and expansion.  

Bassist Toko Yasuda and Clark interlocked their guitars beautifully for the brain-tingling climax of "Surgeon.” Their subtle syncopated choreography charged on “Birth in Reverse" and other songs. Toward the back of the stage sat a white three-block pyramid. Clark’s soapbox. She hopped up the white steps for "Cheerleader," pounding her black high heel on the top step.
Clark wore the expression of a Stepford Wife pixie doll. She moved in a mechanized drone, focused on the performance she was engaged in. Surely she was sweating, but her makeup never smeared. She changed guitars as often as some pop divas change outfits. An assistant rushed out between songs with a fresh axe in hand. She stayed close to the microphone, stepping back momentarily to go cross-eyed in a hypnotic guitar excursion.

Before "Every Tear Disappears" Clark took a moment to welcome the "freaks and the others" in the audience. She called out the millennials chiding them for the generation they were born into, then launched everyone further into space.

She followed the spotlight to the white block pyramid for "I Prefer Your Love." The sweet rhapsodic ballad rocked back and forth as Clark sat, folding her legs on the second step. "All the good in me is because of you,” she serenaded, her gaze growing distant. “It's true.” 

As the feedback rang out, Clark fell to the pyramid steps like a piece of jelly. She writhed and spilled over the steps, pulling herself across each one until she slumped head-first to the bottom, legs crossed and pointed upward in a v-shape.

Toward the end of the set Clark’s face took on that of a growling bobcat, lip upturned. She turned feisty, trying to rile the sitting crowd into consciousness, spitting curses between songs. During a few, she added extra spite to the lyrics. "You traced the Andes with your index," she sung on "Prince Johnny," "and bragged of when and who you're gonna fuck next."

The stuttering snare shuffle on "Huey Newton" turned the energy up. When Clark cooed, "It was a lonely, lonely winter," a chill swept through the crowd. Her rising falsetto then lead us blindly into the tar-thick guitar crunch of the song's last blistering half. "Entombed in the shrine of zeros and ones," Clark screeched, "You know."

The nerve-pinching space-grind of "Bring Me Your Loves" finalized the proper set. Clark took us off our leash and exited into the dark, but we would not leave. We wanted more. After a 14-song set that thrilled, exasperated and numbed the senses, the band returned for a skull-cracking encore.

Clark walked on alone. She took our excitement and anticipation and molded it in her palm like a clump of clay. She stepped to the block pyramid's top step frosted by a single spotlight beam and eased into “Strange Mercy.” She teased out each note of the honey sweet ballad, letting them hang in the air. The crowd fell into a collective trance, growing so quiet, the cicadas sizzling on the tree branches could be heard between the bars. "If I ever meet the dirty the police man who roughed you up," she sung with alarming relevance, "No. I don't know what."

A second song in the encore of a free show is a wonderful thing. What St. Vincent gave us was an extra show within the show. "Year of the Tiger," off Strange Mercy, dumped onto the stage with booming guitars and buzzing electronics. For a moment it felt as though all of Brooklyn was put on standby. 

As the song played through, it began to take another shape. It grew limbs and threw a tantrum. The strobes flickered incessantly with the clashing energy. Clark finally gave in to her punk thrash heart, shredding like Kurt Cobain on live TV and tumbled into the collecting crowd of VIP at the front. Feedback rang out. 

She ended with "Your Lips Are Red," off Marry Me. The pounding psychotic episode, with chants of “Ashes in downtown, ashes in downtown,” just about sucked the remaining brain nodes from everyone’s head.

Free or not, St. Vincent at Prospect Park was one of New York City's top shows this year.   

**

A few days after the performance Clark appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, sitting in for two nights with the 8G Band. She batted her eyelashes while Meyers informed his television audience of the 15,000 people that packed into Prospect Park to see her. "I did that," she quietly purred against the blare of television lighting. Why, yes Annie. You sure fucking did. 

PHOTOSET: St. Vincent at Prospect Park, Brooklyn

PHOTOSET: St. Vincent at Prospect Park, Brooklyn

"She took our anticipation and molded it in her palm like a clump of clay."

Read the live review here.

All photos by Eli Jace.

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