St. Vincent - a.k.a. Annie Clark;

It's really good. Hated that high pitched ending though.

listening to actor atm

Quick trainspotting question for the ILX brane:

The descending vocal part in the intro of this new song, "Surgeon?" It's referencing a big string melody from some kind of soundtrack, something John Barry-ish, or maybe 60s sci-fi -- something I remember mostly because it was prominently sampled as the breakdown of a rave/hardcore track at some point. It's sort of bugging me; anyone recognize those first two lines?

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

You Only Live Twice?

Ah, thanks! Thinking it was a score for something sent me barking up all the wrong trees.

Or at least the "score" part of the trees instead of the "title theme" part

it's from You Only Live Twice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDitUVMMzE0

doh too slow

dope song, love the bassline

ha, i came here to ask the question nabisco just asked. it's been bugging me for the last week.

I would absolutely love this song if it wasn't for the lyric repetition part at the end of each verse phrase. Feels so unnecessary to me for it to happen eevvvvrryy time like that

That new song is incredibe, best thing I've heard all year. Loved both her albums I'm now really excited about the new one.

Actor was a weird album for me - I could tell it was good and not unpleasant to listen to but for some reason I could never really engage with it. Listening to Surgeon now and it's gorgeous... not sure about the prog workout at the end though.

http://pitchfork.com/news/43603-video-st-vincent-cruel/

Another really great song from the new album. The video is really good too, very creepy.

I think I might get quite militant about championing this new album. Absolutely wonderful. Everything I liked about the last one, only moreso.

Love the new album so much. It's a really odd record but just stunning in every way.

Streaming on NPR right now. There is sounding really good so far, some really kinda wtf moments too. On first listen I'm liking this more than Actor (which, I know I'm alone on, but I thought it was a minor step down from the debut).

yo thanks 4 the heads up, think i'll check out at least some of it later

There's like several songs with these weird-ass moments with like spacey-synth and guitars that wouldn't have sounded out of place on that Destroyer album.

those are the best bits.

LOVE this

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8661-st-vincent/

Yeah, this album is great. I've not heard her other albums before either, so I feel like I just opened a whole box of goodies to discover.

can't wait to hear this... gonna wait till i can buy it properly though.

This is definitely one of the best records of the year.

Five tracks in and it's breaking my heart to hear such a lovely voice being wasted in the service of such useless deliberate indie shambolism. That enormous fuzzy bass noise she uses on everything is horrible.

Too many annoying Fiery Furnaces style "ooh look at me" tangents as well.

Difference here is that Fiery Furnaces often forget the song and never come back to it, where St. Vincent always does.

Also, what the hell does "useless deliberate indie shambolism" mean?

Production and arrangement-wise it sounds like a carefully studied mess.

i like the progginess

i find it hard to hear anything she's produced as messy: if anything it's all fussy/neat/antiseptic (choose one)

it seems inevitable-in-retrospect that she'd get into analogue synth (n.b. this is not a complaint)

on one listen the songs struck me more as More Competent Songs In Annie Clark Idiom than as anything great or surprising, though one assumes that'll become more nuanced once i've heard it a little more. but the first time i listened to her seriously was listening to 'actor' a lot a few months ago, so it's a little too close, maybe.

"Strange Mercy" itself is such a fantastic song. I find that the fuzz and squelch - especially when married with how simple and elegant the melodies and songwriting are - is one of my favorite things about her overall sound.

Five tracks in and it's breaking my heart to hear such a lovely voice being wasted in the service of such useless deliberate indie shambolism. That enormous fuzzy bass noise she uses on everything is horrible.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:12 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Too many annoying Fiery Furnaces style "ooh look at me" tangents as well.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:15 PM (1 week ago)

Production and arrangement-wise it sounds like a carefully studied mess.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:29 PM (1 week ago)

on board w/ Matt DC, i played this a couple days back & can't say it really grabbed me at all.

9.0

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15813-strange-mercy/

I don't hear shambolic here at all.

I'm listening to Chloe In The Afternoon again and the production and the arrangement is just horrible, that guitar line and those drums just trampling across everything only just in time with everything. It's either been arranged by someone completely inept or, more likely, she's made a deliberate decision to reframe the song with such jarring elements. And I'm totally down with that being her aesthetic decision and I usually like it when people do that but really the results just sound like shit here.

that guitar line and those drums just trampling across everything only just in time with everything

matt dc makes unconscious effort to make this sound more awesome than i will probably finally think it is

Unfortunately it's neither a good guitar line nor good drums.

the final song on this album is so beautiful

i'm kind of confused by what definition of 'in time' we're using that this incredibly sequenced-sounding and somewhat metronomic drum beat could possibly be 'only just in time' with the incredible sequenced-sounding rest of the track

a 'friend' of mine wrote a 'review' of the radiohead 'album' 'the king of limbs' on his 'blog' (i wasn't sure where i wanted my sarcastic air quotes in that sentence so i just went with all the options) where he was like OH MY GOD THAT PHIL SELWAY IS SUCH A MACHINE HOW DOES HE PLAY IN ALL THESE DIFFERENT WAYS ALL THE TIME ON ALL THESE TRACKS HE'S INHUMAN HE SOUNDS ALMOST PROGRAMMED and it's like c'mon. c'mon dude. think about it

also: incredibly, again, not incredible, oops

I know it's a drum machine ffs. It's that it sounds sloppy and only-just-in-time when paired with the guitar line. Pretty sure the effect is intentional.

i'm worried about listening to this album. I thought Actor was one of the best and most persistently enjoyable records of recent times, and I really hope this doesn't fuck things up.

I've refrained from commenting so far becuase the CD's not arrived yet and I've only listened to a downloaded version a couple of times on the iPhone while walking around town, but there's nothing to worry about. I'm not sure it's as good as Actor (although that took a long time to really worm its way into my affections), but even so, I'm confused by Matt's dislike of the opening track and other stated issues.

I don't think it is a drum machine. There's a drummer credited on the album and a lot of the parts sound 'human', it's just that they've been processed to sound electronic and quantised to get that robotic quality. I really like that approach - it's a smart way of combining electronic sounds with 'live' playing, and it complements her use of synth bass and weird compressed guitar fuzz.
Chloe is a bold opener, a development of the jarring rhythms of Marrow. Not the most immediate of tracks, but fantastic once it gets under your skin. At first I felt the album wasn't as good as Actor, but it's really sunk in now. It's just different, with more of a soul and r 'n b influence.

Another example of what I'm talking about is the drum beat on Strange Mercy, where one drum comes in a fraction late on the third beat of the bar. It's obviously a conscious decision, and if it is a drum machine then it's actually been programmed like that. There's a sort of studied sloppiness that you hear a fair bit in American indie (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors etc) that always annoys me, partly because I always imagine the artists think they're being terribly clever when they do it.

Like, the rest of Strange Mercy is beautiful and floaty and feels like it needs a lot more room to breathe. I understand straightjacketing it in a robotic beat but being so deliberately messy feels like it just goes against the grain of the song for no apparent reason. I'm all for sloppiness in music when it makes everything feel spontaneous but this is the exact opposite.

I listened to this again and it's so frustrating because it's a great voice and a collection of good-to-great songs with a load of irritating production quirks getting in the way. The best songs here - Cruel, Champagne Year, the first 2/3rds of Surgeon, avoid that.

I really like that approach - it's a smart way of combining electronic sounds with 'live' playing, and it complements her use of synth bass and weird compressed guitar fuzz.

Hah, this is the bit I hate. See also the lumpy "I, I, I..." passage that leads up to the chorus of Cheerleader.

I can see how it might seem lumpy, but I like the jarring bits. They rub up against the smoothness. I like going against the grain of the song. Doesn't always work, granted, but with St Vincent it keeps things interesting. I don't think of DP or SV as studiedly sloppy though. SV is a fan of J Dilla, who is famous for his use of unquantised beats to add a certain 'liveness' or looseness to proceedings, and there's a similar impulse here. What's wrong with placing a beat a fraction late? Real musicians do that all the time, so why can't machines?

Good drummers don't intentionally come in that far late though. And I don't see why you'd want to do that to a beat that's otherwise incredibly stiff and rigid next to the rest of the song, unless you were trying to be intentionally jarring.

Anyway, I've made my point, I'll shut up now.

I like that kind of stuff on st vincent records -- and agree w/sentiment above that they "keep it interesting" (maybe as much for her as us). Love the "I, I, I" part too. The only thing that really *bothers* me about the record is the unfortunate sequencing of Cheerleader to Surgeon, with the latter beginning in the same key and the same *note* as the "I, I, I" from the former. pet peeve, I guess

But it's encouraging that she makes music which might otherwise be a really easy fit for a hell of a lot of people...but retains little idiosyncratic bits that keep it from becoming that. If i said such things, I'd say "you go girl!" but thank goodness I don't.