St Vincent - s/t (25 February 2014)

You should check out Prince Johnny for starters.

The only lyric that registered on Blank Project was "Life is going faster like a bus that runs me over" and that was for the wrong reasons.

i can see why one might prefer the stark & relatively organic-sounding neneh cherry album to st. vincent's (well-described) whirligigs and whatnots, but i enjoy the kaleidoscopic palette and compulsive filigree for their own sake. there's something quite tense about much of st. vincent, as though it rides, serene or twitching, atop a wave of anxiety. this quality is present in clark's mannered delivery as much as in the hyperkinetic music around her. "birth in reverse" reminds me strongly of early xtc, who share that jittery, seam-bursting intensity and kitchen sink sonics. also: tune-yards, talking heads, marnie stern, etc.

i do agree that the songs, while extremely enjoyable, aren't terribly catchy. i don't go around singing them, have to struggle to remember how a single song goes whenever i look at the tracklist. and i've listened to the album several times. i don't see this as a fault, as some music takes a bit longer to work its way in, and i enjoy st. vincent enough to happily put in whatever time might be required.

Lex I want you to come round my house and listen to these records with me. 'Rough' and 'scratchy' doesn't suit either of them as a description afaic; these both sound excellent and expensive and modern and hi-fi to me, albeit in different ways. I think some people have been using lo-fi in a really weird way that confuses me no end.

^^^

It's cool. Lex uses "Lo-fi" as a philosophical stance, indicating "indie-rock" rather than any kind of musical one.

lex, I dislike this record and Congletno but it's far from rough or scratchy.

*Congleton

xp Oh I think they're really catchy. Melody's never been a problem for St V imo.

i reject your shiny expensive consumerist stereo system on ideological grounds nick

TBF, I think the Neneh sounds pretty raw. In a good way, it sounds like a live radio session or something rather than a studio construct, particularly her vocals, which sound conspicuously under-produced, also in a good way.

i am listening to "prince johnny" and i take nothing back about "rough" or "lo-fi"! the guitars and the horrible drums, how does anyone not think those are demo-sounding.

actually reading the lyrics and they ARE kinda great but she's not selling them to me effectively and if there's any immediate hook it's eluding me completely

i should not get bogged down in threads about artists i dislike and don't intend to give more time but no one's talking about neneh

Is the Neneh album streaming anywhere (not spotify)?

But you love shiny expensive consumerist music, dude? (And most of my stereo is made up of components manufactured by small British and European companies, but whatever...)

http://www.notendownload.com/8/dpshopgrafiken/png/vorschaudruck/7070064_thumb.png

There's a bit of distortion on Prince Johnny, for instance (and deliberately on a lot of things she does; it's clearly an aesthetic thing for her), but man, the way this is mixed, the synth-vocals in the left channel; this is really deliberate and purposeful and expensive-sounding. Lo-fi to me says "recorded in a basement on a 4-track, sounds like shit, because we had no money and no other option".

As for lyrics being good, isolating them to judge quality is false logic; they have to work in context of song, arrangement, production, performativity.

Also thanks for the new display name!

Damn the length.

drums sound great on the neneh record, drums sound terrible on the st. vincent record

Drums sound real on the Neneh record, and very machine-y on the Vincent record; I prefer the former, certainly, but the latter isn't 'terrible', to my ears; it's an aesthetic choice for a very artificial-sounding record.

i am listening to "prince johnny" and i take nothing back about "rough" or "lo-fi"! the guitars and the horrible drums, how does anyone not think those are demo-sounding.

― lex pretend

The drums on the St. Vincent album sound fine to me. No idea why you're picking them out as a weakness on this album. Compare the drums on Prince Johnny to some of the songs on that Amel Larrieux album you love (Afraid and I Do Take in particular) How come she can get away with that sound? Some of those songs have much more of demo feel to them too, more than the St. Vincent album. I'm not saying it's a bad thing on Amel's album, I love that record. I just don't see the difference really. St. Vincent's album sounds so great and unique to me because she mixes styles very successfully. Her songs wouldn't be improved by live drums.

I do not not not understand why people continue to insist that "St Vincent" mayn't be described as lo-fi. "Prince Johnny" is trashy, over-compressed, filtered drum machines, the vocals are distorted, and this loud-as-shit Mellotron which is by definition a lo-fi instrument (and one that sinks records imo); unfortunately unable to really make comments about the frequency spectrum because I only have streaming but it sounds like the frequencies top out at 2kHz, there's definitely no sibilance on the vocals or splash (or presence) on the drums. Sorry to get all audio engineer in here but people are making things personal re: a very real and normal aural response

That makes me wonder is the streaming is on a different master, although I've not sat with this at the hi-fi properly all the way through yet.

I guess I'm stuck thinking "this is low-pass filtered because it was recorded on a boombox" = lo-fi, while "this is low-pass filtered because they low-pass filtered it in their fancy studio" = something else.

but goon tie clearly has the knowledge from the synth thread, so I will accept this as lo-fi. I just thought lo-fi was supposed to invoke bootleg cassette nostalgia.

No for real! Obv this is not a record made in the genre of "lo-fi". I'm defending the right of others to say something sounds lo-fi, when clearly there have been decisions made to make it sound "dirty" in a way that has been destructive to many instrument's higher frequencies. This isn't just a streaming thing-- though I don't trust the audio quality of streams-- I am listening to Tristan Murail Youtubes this morning and despite Youtube's highly restrictive lowpass filter there is tonnes of harmonic information here that is non-existent on Youtubes of "Prince Johnny".

If anybody hears the drums on "Prince Johnny" and thinks "wow what gloriously recorded drums, and in such high fidelity!" then there is nothing I can say to help you

Well no, of course not, but gloriously recorded, high fidelity, live-sounding drums would be totally alien to her aesthetic.

that's exactly why i was saying i should have known beforehand i wouldn't like it. idk, i saw good writing and interesting interviews and lots of talk about her and i was suckered in but this aesthetic is just...i can't even hear where the good bits are, it's alien to me

"Prince Johnny" is trashy, over-compressed, filtered drum machines

it's trashy, over-compressed, filtered live drums! which are way harder to record and make sound this full. they might have cut the live drums into samples and sequenced them, but her albums have lots of live drums that have been mixed to sound like samples & drum machines.

listen to the drums on 'bring me your loves', live but very meticulously recorded in a nice studio (live snare mixed into two tracks with different sounds and panned hard left & right, over what sounds like a programmed kick sample).

Haven't heard this record yet, enjoying all the talk. I just wanted to butt in to say that I absolutely love ilm for posts like this:

listen to the drums on 'bring me your loves', live but very meticulously recorded in a nice studio (live snare mixed into two tracks with different sounds and panned hard left & right, over what sounds like a programmed kick sample).

Like I love seeing someone that can nail this down so nicely for a non-drummer to get a handle on it.

"Bring Me Your Loves" is my favourite track FYI, \m/ and yeah the snare sounds awesome on it, cymbals too, (though sampled, I reckon)-- as does the granulatey fuzz solo on that guitar.

Yeah yeah not a drum machine on "Prince Johnny" but quantized and looped and run through an H919 emulator. There is a sliding scale of quality for that super straight and filtered drum "loop" sound with "The First Taste" as heaven and the remix of "Hey Jupiter" as hell.

Never heard of St. Vincent until I saw her on Colbert the other night.
I liked it and she seemed pretty interesting.

Psychopath is my favourite at the moment. The way she enunciates 'Cos I'm on the edge of a heart attack' in the first verse makes my ears melt. Then the main refrain comes in and it's such an familiar chord sequence and it sounds a bit like Blondie, but she pulls it off in this very particular affecting way.

I get why lex doesn't like this but also i kind of don't. There's loads of stuff with this kind of production aesthetic that I've seen you really enjoy in the past (I mean, the Knife are much more ragged than this), but if it's not for you it's not for you.

The Knife? Wtf

lol, thread reaches peak Lex challopsy

The Knife are many things but ragged is not one of them.

That's my point. But if you can enjoy the production choices on STH this is a walk in the park.

I kind of get what you mean, but STH and this sound VERY different, and Lex's problem, I suspect, is with particular artifacts, let's say, or manifestations, within the sonic palette that SV uses here. So it's not about busyness or unpredictability or juxtaposition or things jarring, or whatever, it's with timbres of certain instruments, deliberate choices in use of distortion, etcetera.

Listening to this album and discussing it here has made me think how post-Soft Bulletin Annie Clark seems in some ways; she's obviously doing something very different to the Flaming Lips, but there's a definite aesthetic line there, I think, that hadn't really occurred to me before.

Hmmmm. I do kinda see where that comparison is coming from, in that the two artists sound nothing alike, but the production choices are quite deliberately potentially off-putting.

I've been listening to St Vincent a lot these past 24 hours, and I'm starting to see where the haterz are coming from on the sound of it. It *is* weirdly produced. Especially coming from this 3-week binge of listening to The Band That Shall Not Be Named. Because listening to the later material of TBTSNBN, I am listening a *lot* to the slickness of the production values, and how everything has been shined up with this glossy commercial sheen and everything is just lubricated up to just slide into your ears like seduction. There's a place for that, but I do also feel very manipulated by it.

And the production on St Vincent is the complete opposite, it's all very "nope, I'm not going to make this easy for you." Which is intriguing, because they are such bouncy pop songs, with these earwormy melodies, but the sounds are deliberately trashed and messed about and chopped up and mangled. Not in a random, indiscriminate way, but in a very deliberate "sometimes this sounds like an AM radio playing in another room" way and sometimes in a "you want this shredding riff? you're going to have to tease it out" kind of way. Which, oddly, makes me actually want to listen to it more, in that it's cool and aloof while it susses *your* intentions out, rather than just being inaccessible.

The only complain I have is the lack of bass. Like, yeah, I get it, I get why you're using these weird keyboard squiggle fart sounds, because it goes with that cut-up live drum aesthetic. But there's really only one song where there's actual proper, full-on bass tone and it's like "OH HEY BABY you are what I've been missing."

BB 100% otm. I've come back to listening to bjork of late and I think it might because they have me a similar feeling.

Yes that's a great assessment BB

Who's TBTSNBN?

I'm not saying; it's too embarrassing.

you should be arrested by the international police for even asking that question

jaymc and his spreadsheets probably already work for that international crime-fighting organisation, sssshhhhh

God I am so into this album!! This is the first time I've rly listened to/enjoyed her and oh man "Rattlesnake" might make it to my year end top 20 list idk

something very 70s-rock about this album, and not just because prince johnny sounds like it could've played over a scene as things fell apart in boogie nights.

i wish she stretched-out like this with her guitar solos in the album version (at least of this song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ4mIVOrBMo

a short solo, but really well-done.

The album's sound quality took a little getting used to, but the second half won me over on first spin, more on the second. Her live SXSW stream on NPR got me right away, with a fuller sound, letting guitar and synth have much more room, though not too much. Then again, she ranged through the catalogue. Her set isn't posted on NPR, or anywhere else that I've checked, but it's worth checking titles on this set list, for a few YouTube excerpts of this show and others---from What Are You Listening To, my attempt at live coverage and another guy's better description of an earlier Texas show:

St. Vincent begins with the one about taking off her clothes and walking around in the desert at night, then running from a snake (true story). Twisting her guitar quite a bit.

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 04:15 (6 days ago) Permalink

Yowee. St Vincent w Toko Yasuda, keyboards, vocals, bass; also a drummer and another keyboard player way back there, at least when Yasuda stepped out with her bass, especially for some prog-metal toward the end. Rocking art rock, at times close to warp-toned Zep (with some early King Crimson,also late, no middle). Concise, though. New songs, supposedly more straight-forward, fit with old, as lyrics came off like marginalia, flying notes to self, bits of her self-cited "Joan Didion-esque" persona's elliptical clarity; ditto Marilyn Monroe's writing ("Surgeon" inspired by the latter). Stage show hyper-focused,floaty(rockin').
Albarn can't follow; don't think I'll stay awake for that (maybe they'll post his and hers).
Set List for St. Vincent:

Rattlesnake
Digital Witness
Cruel
Birth In Reverse
Regret
I Prefer Your Love
Surgeon
Cheerleader
Prince Johnny
Year Of The Tiger
Marrow
Huey Newton
Bring Me Your Loves
Krokodil

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:36 (6 days ago) Permalink

Think the persona she described is or was meant to be "Joan Didion-esque middle-aged woman on the verge," but on this occasion she also seemed to enjoy being young, eerie (buzzword of our age, after all), hot and dead(pan).

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:41 (6 days ago) Permalink

Also, as Houston Press blogger Chris Grey described her show better and earlier this week:
the mechanistic robo-funk of the rhythm section versus the overwhelming omnichords of the synthesizers or the shards of post-punk guitar versus that delicate little dance she yeah, yeah.

― dow, Thursday, 13 March 2014 05:54 (6 days ago) Permalink