St Vincent - s/t (25 February 2014)

obligatory "would marry" post here.

Last 30 seconds superfluous. Otherwise it's the best Girls Aloud record in eight years.

She is fabulous and I'm very much looking forward to this.

i must say, off the last album "Cruel" was the only track I really really loved (and I did really really love it), but the Byrne collab has really grown on me. The track 'Optimist' is especially good.

Optimist is wonderful.

well i'll say one thing, that is a lot of fucking chicken wire she's got there

And a fucking massive potty.

New song is fantastic. Love her three albums so much and cannot wait for this one.

Another new song. This album is going to be strange.

http://youtu.be/-7LsBjrqqHA

Birth in Reverse was...eh. Digital Witness is full on great, tho.

So there doesn't seem to be a lot of hype for this album around here.

Another new song.

http://www.nme.com/news/st-vincent/75313

Lovely stuff.

Yeah, really like that.

Really excited for this album.

This is one of the better songs I've heard of hers. Still kind of spoiled by gimmicky production featuring grating, unnecessary distortion (this seems to be her thing and it's pretty much a deal breaker for me since I find most of her songwriting not bad but not exceptional, either). It's a sound that probably won't age well. Not exactly a groundbreaking set of chord changes, but a nice tune. Just too bad about the production. She lost some points after the John Barry You Only Live Twice ripoff song a few years back, too. Why would someone do that? I guess it's a step up from yelling over a slowed down Curtis Mayfield record.

This is out there now. I like it a lot for the most part, takes a dip in the last few tracks (second last track in particular is really bad).

I'm actually a little bit in shock at how incredible this album is. I do love her three albums so far but this one just seems like it's in a different league and is very close to being a perfect record. Prince Johnny, Regret and Psychopath are my early favourites but every song has something really great about it.

i just listened to the previews on itunes and it seems more accessible and immediate than anything i remember from her.

It's definitely a lot easier to take in than Strange Mercy. It's just a really beautiful record.

But yeah, big fan of the major-label-accessible version of St. Vincent in general.

don't get me wrong. i like every album she's released (and -- on an unrelated point -- i am transfixed by her beauty).

Same here Daniel.

Not a fan of "Every Tear Disappears" or "Bring Me Your Loves," but the other 9 probably make up my fave record of hers so far. She could stand to vary the sonics a bit more on the next one, though.

Every Tear Disappears is the weakest song but I still like it. At the moment I Prefer Your Love has become my favourite and could be the best song she's done.

Rattlesnake reminds me of Post-era Bjork, for some reason. So far I'm enjoying this record more than I thought I would (and I loved both Actor and Strange Mercy).

I can't wait to hear this! I really enjoyed watching her play songs at the new york fashion show. She's got some cool choreography going on too.

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

i love watching her play guitar.

is this song in mime

OK... wow. Because musically that song is interesting and dynamic and both not what I would have expected from St Vincent, but also weirdly *completely* totally sounding distinctively her...

But her STAGE PRESENCE, holy shit! She really has been hanging out with David Byrne too much, and he has been rubbing off on her in the best possible way. She's mesmerising and amazing, and yeah, she always has been fantastic to watch, but I love the theatricality and the "mime" and her expression while she plays/dances is absolutely the best.

Alright, I was going back and forth as to whether I should get this album due to mixed reactions, but, um, YES. Need more of this.

Choreography is an art I wish I understood more.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/swans-finish-next-two-hour-epic-to-be-kind-with-st-vincent-20140214

Can't wait for this record (except I can, otherwise I'd download it and I don't want to hear it til I've bought it), and she's playing in Bristol ON MY BIRTHDAY.

OMG OMG when is your birthday again?

(I have to go to Bristol soon, maybe it's the same weekend? I hope so, because ironically it is the weekend that Interpol are playing in my hood and I'm glad of an excuse not to go.)

May 15th.

Ha, that video is great!!

the woah-oh-oh-oh-ohs of "prince johnny" have been swirling around in my head all morning

Streaming in full at The Guardian now:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/feb/18/st-vincent-st-vincent-album-stream

ty voodoo chili. this is great.

prince johnny is epic. best, most immediate song she's done; the backing choir and the build to the chorus is fantastic.

Streams are so damn unreliable on this connection, but wwooooo, excited to hear this!

(Oh, this is the song from the jerky-dance video and it's even AWESOMER and jerkier on record.)

streaming @ NPR, too. and this is getting "mixed reactions" you say?!? from whome? it's fucking fantastic is what it is, 2014's first off-the-line aoy contender afaic. varied, risky, catchy, clever and addictive as hell. immediately wanted to go back and replay like every single song (but restrained myself in favor of the "album experience").

and yeah, i'm suprised by the relatively low level of anticipatory slavering itt. thought she was a designated local hero. did that half-boring byrne collaboration glaze everyone's eyes? this is at least a thousand times better. kate bush people need to be on this.

you did not just... RMDE RMDE and KMT and SMH no.

I'm so into the synth-bass farts on this record. She's always had an amazing sonic ear, but this record is just so... "oooooh, what *IS* that odd noise, I ~lyke~ it?"

2014's first off-the-line aoy contender afaic. varied, risky, catchy, clever and addictive as hell.

― contenderizer, Wednesday, February 19, 2014

it's v good, but 2014's only album-of-the-year contender so far? hm, no.

• tinariwen's emmaar
• sun kil moon's benji
• katy b's little red
• childbirth's it's a girl! (okay, this one's a little idiosyncratic; still . . . )

I liked the Byrne collab but was a bit disappointed by her last album Strange Mercy which had a couple of good moments but mostly just felt a bit awkward. Really love Actor from 2009 though. What I've heard from this so far sounds great though. Really think she's a fantastic "rock star" in an old fashioned kind of sense.

She's always had an amazing sonic ear, but this record is just so... "oooooh, what *IS* that odd noise, I ~lyke~ it?"

yeah, also like the fact that there isn't a clear palette of such sounds that she's working from. each song seems composed of the pieces necessary for it, regardless of how little they might have in common with the tones & timbres employed elsewhere. not that she doesn't have a cache of go-to favorites, especially where the guitars are concerned...

speaking of byrne as an influence, couldn't help but hear digital witness' "people turn the tv on it looks just like a window" as a lost and unrecorded talking heads line, right down to the faux-naive delivery.

It's February, can we stop all this "album of the year contender!" nonsense? In fact can we stop it every month. Inane and idiotic.

"people turn the tv on it looks just like a window"

There's a Byrne song on the Byrne/Vincent album all about TV which I thought was a bit trite and anachronistic at the time.

it's v good, but 2014's only album-of-the-year contender so far? hm, no.

tinariwen's emmaar
sun kil moon's benji
katy b's little red
childbirth's it's a girl!

need to hear that tinariwen, but i've never been a kozelik or katy b fan, so i wouldn't expect my possibles list to overlap all that much w yours. other favorites so far:

warpaint - warpaint
against me! - transgender dysphoria blues
cynic - kindly bent to free us
behemoth - the satanist

It's February, can we stop all this "album of the year contender!" nonsense? In fact can we stop it every month. Inane and idiotic.

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, February 19, 2014 6:52 AM (14 minutes ago)

your face is inane and idiotic

I liked the Byrne collab but was a bit disappointed by her last album Strange Mercy which had a couple of good moments but mostly just felt a bit awkward. Really love Actor from 2009 though. What I've heard from this so far sounds great though. Really think she's a fantastic "rock star" in an old fashioned kind of sense.

― doglato dozzy (dog latin)

It's much less awkward than Strange Mercy. Most of it is really instant and catchy.

I Prefer Your Love has just taken over for me. One of the most heartbreaking songs I've ever heard.

As for album of the year contenders. This is ahead of Wild Beasts and Katy B for me, by quite a long way. Yeah I know it's early to say that but it will be take a lot for something to beat it. It's a perfect record. Up there with When Saints Go Machine and iamamiwhoami as the best albums I've heard this decade, yeah I went there.

Latest newsletter:

here we go bouncing into a new year. maybe less like a bounce and more like an 80's national lampoon's station wagon with suitcases bulging and strapped to the top. you stop suddenly, and everything comically comes crashing and spilling out in front of you. amid the shuffling and scrambling to shove your unmentionables back into the splayed, cracked cases, you stop for a moment, look at a trinket or talisman of the year past, and remember a real moment. a moment you had forgotten because, in the words of the great david bowie, "my brain felt like a warehouse/it had no room to spare/i had to cram so many things to store everything in there…" right now, a few weeks past an abrupt reckoning%, i am clear-headed, quiet, looking out on a beautiful new zealand day^ and absolutely drowning in the milk of human kindness. thank you for making 2014 the most insane, feral#, and rewarding year of life. wishing everyone everything your heart desires*. xx ac in auckland

%being off tour for the first time in 11 months
^a day which peter jackson himself couldn't have dreamed up any lovelier, and yes, yes…i am BACK on tour
#my mother made me promise not to climb any more scaffolding
*unless you're a psychopath

annie, you're great and i love your music and everything but please quit with all the assumptive Innocent Smoothies 2nd-person monologuing. cheers!

Best Alternative Music Album Grammy Earns More Annie-Type Prose:

2.9.2015

in 2007, i signed to beggars banquet records. i was living in dallas, texas in my childhood bedroom at the time, which i had fashioned into a makeshift studio in order to record some of what would end up being my debut album "marry me."

the first days of touring my own songs and as "st. vincent" are very vivid. in early 2007, in anticipation of the release of my record, my (much beloved) agent put me on the road as solo support for jolie holland and midlake. he saw potential in me, but rightfully, thought i needed to get my live act together. get comfortable playing for people. get road-tested. like most of the rest of my career, it was a trial by earth, wind, and fire.

i was performing solo; just my voice, a guitar through an array of effects pedals, a "stomp board" -- a homemade device i made out of a piece of plywood and a contact microphone that i ran through a bass EQ pedal, and a keyboard. i thought the keyboard looked unmysterious on it's own, so i designed a lighted wooden enclosure to go around it. my brother-in-law helped me build it in his garage. it weighed a gazillion pounds and gave me splinters to carry, and i don't think anyone was under any illusion that there was anything but a keyboard inside it. neither the first nor the last in a series of hilariously ill-fated ideas.

january 2007, i borrowed my father's station wagon and drove 12 hours from dallas to frozen lincoln, nebraska to open for jolie holland (what a voice) at a half-full 150 capacity carpeted club. i believe the compensation was $250/gig but it could have been as much as $500 -- more $ than i'd ever seen for a gig for sure and guaranteed, no less! in my memory, this midwestern jolie tour dovetailed right into opening the midlake tour. they were out in support of their excellent record, "the trials of van occupanther" and were the sweetest good texas boys you could ever hope to meet. the drummer of midlake, mackenzie smith, would later prove to be a great collaborator, playing on actor, strange mercy, and st. vincent.

on this tour, i'd enlisted my dear friend, jamil, to come and sell merch and help do the long drives. we'd just played a show in detroit and while we'd been inside, a blizzard had swept through and covered the stationwagon in snow and ice. it was treacherous. jamil, who always had some incredible hustle going, hired a homeless man named larry to dig the stationwagon out of the snow. (in college, he had a gold lexus, stripped it of the good parts, and resold it. when i asked if he was sad to see it go, he said, "girl, they think they bought a lexus but they bought a corolla.") i'll never forget driving out of bombed out-detroit, apocalyptic at 1 AM. interstate 94 tense and quiet, jamil trying to make sure we didn't crash or stall on the icy road.

i have eaten years of veggie subway sandwiches on highways 10-90, stayed at a super 8 motel behind a kansas federal prison, peed in cups in dressing rooms when there was no bathroom, gotten eaten alive by bedbugs at a cincinnati days inn. i would not trade a single highway or city or moment or person i met for anything. i have loved it all.

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2015/02/StV.jpg

Love an Annie to death but what a weird fucking statement

seems in character: earnest yet clinical, detail-oriented, a little strange

that last one wasn't so bad in a 'started from the bottom(ish), look at me now' kind of way. but i remember the (by far) lowest point of SV's Cambridge showin the UK, with this whole routine where Annie 'supposed' things about the collected histories of the audience: 'When you were young, you used to trap insects and pull their wings off just to see what would happen' (or something like that), and I don't know if it was a cultural misunderstanding but it all fell so flat, with just a few nonplussed giggles coming from an otherwise silent audience.

idgi -- what's weird about that statement? she's just talking about her experiences?

I feel as if she's positioning her former "small-business model" in a negative light in opposition to her current blessed big box indie model. The surprise ending! "I loved it all." Like, if only all my favourite bands could be making $500 a night and staying in motels.

ah ok
that makes sense
bedbugs aren't a one-night only affair either, they'll stowaway in a corner of your bag and follow you forever

I mean

I barely want to have this conversation, I feel unmixed pleasure about her Grammy win. But I have been having larger issues with big biz indie, both as audience and participant, ethically and aesthetically. And as it is difficult for me to discern what is or is not coloured by professional jealousy, I generally save this shit for my lucky therapist.

My personal rule is that if somebody else is setting up your gear for you, you should probably think about breaking up the band. And if there's an in-ear monitor? cancel the tour immediately. Nobody wants to see or hear that.

the homeless man thing was a little weird but meh

we also need a veggie sub rate in order to understand just how many veggie subs she ate! what if the appropriate veggie sub rate that she's referencing is 60 veggie subs per second?! that would be an award worthy number of veggie subs! give her the golden sub!

you folks are harsh

sigh

high standards for the people we love is all

Thanks for reminding me of all the reasons I generally tend to avoid ILM these days, guys. I really needed that.

You're welcome!

I am fine with her not following fgti's personal rules.

my personal rule is that if you normally save shit for your therapist you should continue

These fucking dumb personal rules are for myself, not for anyone else. I suppose it'd be easier to have same conversation about a more-roundly-despised big box indie act.

@ katherine I've been taught to "save it for therapy" most of my life, but I've found it ultimately more beneficial to maintain a social circle that is comfortable with sharing their anxieties

I am not talking about St. Vincent specifically, I am talking about the ugliness of when indie-gets-big-business shows, I have literally had this exact conversation with all possible indictable acts, with responses from "I know how you feel, 200-to-400 people is a perfect-sized crowd and I've been eager to dial it back" to "I don't care what the audience wants, full steam ahead".

Generally I've been "I'm OK, you're OK" about small-business, big-business, it's all good, sell tickets play shows. But reading things like Ian Cohen describing small business models as being rooted in "indie defeatism", to this statement which seems to posit that the current-and-future reality for many indie acts ($250-a-show, Motel 6) is something to be overcome, left behind... it is extremely frustrating to read. Like I wrote e-mails to [band] and [band] when they hired lighting techs and/or monitor engineers to say "don't do it" and they did anyway and lost money on those tours.

i am glad that she is getting paid for what she does and hope that she enjoys every sandwich

pomplamoose have not made it yet

katherine: sick burn on charles mingus there

St. Vincent ‏@st_vincent 1h1 hour ago

S&M&M'S.
0 replies 322 retweets 696 favorites

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_S_bWCXEAA6e7P.jpg

Stereogum ‏@stereogum 11m11 minutes ago

Hear @St_Vincent interview Gang Of Four's Andy Gill http://bit.ly/1FbGwvo

i should know better than to believe internet celeb couple rumours (remember when that frank ocean x miguel rumour got some traction?) but i'm so into the idea of annie & delevingne being gfs

another new track:

http://pitchfork.com/news/58251-st-vincent-shares-teenage-talk-written-for-hbos-girls/

Is it more rigid robot funk?

St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service

A big thanks to everyone who tuned into the first episodes of St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service on Beats1. And thank you to everyone who wrote in with your stories. I sat with a margarita (or two) and my trusty PC (joke, Apple!) and read each of them. I was so moved and wished I could make one for every single person. Alas, time is unmerciful.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that a second round of submissions will be accepted this coming Tuesday, July 14 at 12pm EST/9am PST for one hour. Click HERE to submit.
http://ilovestvincent.com/mixtape/

Xx
ac
(To access previous mixtape playlists and exclusive show content click HERE
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)

Hey St Vincent fans - any recommendations for a newbie to her stuff? I've enjoyed scattered tracks like "Surgeon", "Cheerleader" and "Prince Johnny".

she's got a new one coming out this year, i think. maybe wait and see how it is?

honestly the s/t was the first of hers i've liked and i LOOOOOOOOVE it, so maybe that?

i thought the s/t was more uneven than "strange mercy" but that the highs were higher.

Actor was my gateway. But they're all good.

her last few records are quite different and yet...somehow extremely the same. I'd like to hear her loosen up her arrangements a bit for diversity's sake.

there's a sterility to her records that makes them not stand up to a whole lot of relistening for me even as I admire the craft

otm. I thought s/t was great all the way through, but its consistency makes me more likely to play individual tracks than the whole album

I think all of them after the first one are amazing. The first one is really good but just short of amazing.

Actor is my favourite but I do love all four of her albums in different ways. I think the self titled might be the best introduction to her.

I didn't get into her until "Prince Johnny" convinced me to give the s/t a shot. I liked it quite a bit and still need to go back and listen to the earlier records.

Also, "Teenage Talk," her one-off single from 2015, is really great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7IYosdzUX8

Actor and the S/T album are both great. Not so much a fan of Strange Mercy (other than 'Cruel' which is a great song).

Actor > Strange Mercy > Love This Giant > s/t

never listened much to Marry Me

but it's all great, highy recommend seeing her live if you get the chance

my fav song is the party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9L3D1w8KcY

also this is a good watch if fx you feel like a lump

"Teenage Talk" is the best thing she's ever done, hope album 5 sounds similar (also hope album 5 comes out this year). s/t is her most cohesive album, imo (in the minority that like it better than Strange Mercy).

Niels - That's a great track