St. Vincent - St. Vincent

St. Vincent
St. Vincent
24 February 2014
Loma Vista/Republic

4.5 stars out of 5

 

“Oh, what an ordinary day. Take out the garbage, masturbate.” So sings Annie Clark on St. Vincent’s eponymous fourth LP. The music here, however, is anything but ordinary. Clark brings both the experimental ecstasy and the attitude. If you read to the end of this review, you’ll learn new ways of being irrationally giddy at how good a record can be.

Clark gets off to a running start with “Rattlesnake,” a true narrative of her journey into the desert. This engaging track is full of pseudo-industrial noise sets the tone for what is a very exciting and innovate suite of songs to come. “Birth in Reverse” is just awesome. Go listen to it and you’ll see. Trust me. Would I lie to you? (Answer: depends.) “Prince Johnny” sees Clark snorting pieces of the Berlin Wall (ouch!) against a backdrop of DNA-damaged R&B. “Digital Witness” is (insert multiple hyperbolic adjectives here). If Tori Amos had stayed on her game post-Choirgirl Hotel and made some truly great records, they might have sounded (if they were lucky) a bit like this. “Bring Me Your Loves” deserves more praise than I am physically capable of giving at this moment. “Every Tear Disappears” begins like The Cars’ “Good Times Roll,” chugging back and forth before Clark takes it to her breast and nurtures it into a fully-blown edgy and angular (oh, the clichés!) St. Vincent™ tune.

In conclusion: it’s all good. Really freakin’ good. If you weren’t a St. Vincent fan before, you probably still won’t be, for all the same reasons, but you will have to grudgingly admit that this record is unforgettable (if still unlikeable). And then in a year or so you’ll come around, just like all those people (myself included) who hated Animal Collective pre-2009 and then simply couldn’t deny that Merriweather Post Pavilion was all that and a bag of chips.

reviewed by Richard Krueger