St Vincent - s/t (25 February 2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfUa-0jc2U

Oh, so that's what “I prefer your love to Jesus” is about.

Also, note to self: look up Turkish musician Selda

Selda is *amazing*! I think there's a reissue of her s/t on the Anatolian Invasion imprint of Finders Keepers and also she's done a ton of collaborations with Mogollar as well as other great Turkish musicians. "Ince Ince" is probably her best known jam if someone can find it on YouTube & link up.

really like 'bring me your loves', the digital guitar sound and cell phone interference percussion and ersatz second line groove. her albums are always amazing sonically (drum sounds especially). they sound expensive.

oh, so that's where that mos def beat comes from (selda).

tylerw was talking about Toko Yasuda iirc. she's in Enon, Blonde Redhead and St. Vincent.

I like this album a lot. Despite being a fan I've always found St. Vincent's albums a bit patchy, although now I'm wondering if I underrated Strange Mercy.

Having listened to it again this afternoon, I've come to the conclusion that Strange Mercy is oddly back-loaded. The last four songs are sucker punches all in a row. It's Dilettante that's the one I really really love at the moment. But mostly because I'm such a sucker for fuzz bass & that song has a monster fuzz bass. (There's some kind of modulation like a wah or lo-pass filter going on, too, which just hits my complete guitar pedal sweet spot, it's such a massive, monstrous, almost ugly sound, it's so dirty I love it)

I always thought it was quite a front loaded album. Cruel, Cheerleader, Surgeon and Northern Lights are my favourite songs on there. Year of the Tiger is an excellent closer but I always kind of forget about Hysterical Strength and Champagne Year.

I think it's a good sign when two people can have such different ideas of what its strengths are!

i don't think i like her rhythm section

it's got this radio-ready pop-friendly indie-rock feel to it that just seems dead to me, like the 00s codification of backbeats and drum fill ideas for music that's required for traditional and economic reasons to have drums in it

Man, I love that St. Vincent is a thing that people listen to, but my own love for her music is usually confined to an idea here, a sound there. She's my favourite guitarist going, basically, and every moment that she's not shredding is a moment I wish she was shredding. For every David Toopy loop like on "Rattlesnake" there's a (as j says) "radio-ready pop-friendly backbeat" like on the following track. Also, all her songs follow this barrel-organ kind of harmonic sensibility that remind me of carousel-music, but that's my problem, not hers, I think. Love her to bits but my favourite songs of hers are the Rapeman and Pop Group covers (prob the best covers of anything I've ever heard ever)

Sorry, Big Black covers, duh

haha yeah i was going to say her big black one also slays

idk i was hoping initially for this album to sound like "krokodil" but i am very satisfied with the way this album has turned out, kind of obsessed w/ it atm

You know, if you want to listen to someone who SHREDS every second of every track, go and listen to In Advance Of The Broken Arm. Shredding is boring if shredding is the only thing an artist ever does. It's both far more beautiful, but also more unsettling when someone builds up a pretty or elegant or carefully organised and constrained mood, and then blasts this eruption of shredding right through it. Which is what she excels at.

Because what hooked me from Actor on, was the way that she would construct these lovely things, which maybe occasionally swayed a bit too far into the hokey - there was occasionally a bit of the Disney Soundtrack, with all these swooping sentimental strings (the same kind of mood, though not necessarily *sound* that would make a lot of people say "fuck no!" to late period Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips during their Musicals on Mars phase) - though that said, there is a *weirdness* to some actual classic era Disney soundtracks, Dumbo and the Jungle Book and stuff (where is Melissa W?) where even as a child - *especially* as a child - you realise there is something very, very odd going underneath all the sweetness. That kind of mellotron orchestral "aaaaaahhhh" noise she uses all over the back of e.g. Prince Johnny.

So I get lulled into this state of both false security, and tension, and then the SHREDDING GUITAR BIT comes in and the whole song disintegrates around it like melting celluloid film. Which is somehow so much *better* than if she just shredded all the way through.

Anyway, I appear to have got up early enough to get a working stream today, so I am halfway listening to it now.

^ great post

Agree on this, there's something slightly sugary about a lot of her music, but sugary can also mean edgy, unsettling, hypertensive and that's why I like a lot of her stuff. There's a great light/dark juxtaposition in her work.

Yeah, anyone who dismisses music as "sugary" with the assumption that it's some... meaningless confectionary. Like... have you ever seriously indulged in a *lot* of sugar for its warping, druglike effects? That's the kind of brittle, tense, sugary thing she excels at.

i think the only disappointing thing about this album for me is that there isn't a key change at the end of "severed crossed fingers". the build up kind of demands it and the result isn't as climactic as it should be, imo.

but otherwise, this is so good, omg @ the basslines in prince johnny.

this is great. i'm not hearing much "shredding," but her guitar-playing is (for the most part) nicely woven into the fabric of her songs. melodies and arrangements are strong here. drum sound's a little flat, but you can't have everything, i guess.

I've heard this all the way through now. Is it me or is it very short? It was all over so quickly! I guess that's the sign of a good album, which it is. Spiky in a punkish way. Nothing on here quite as pretty as 'The Strangers' nor as succinctly pop as 'Cruel' but there are so many high points - can't wait to hear it again.

Last night's show was the most remarkable thing I've seen in ages. So theatrical - every move calculated - and yet raw when it needed to be, like a blend of Kate Bush, David Byrne, Janelle Monae and Jack White. She makes the electric guitar seem new again, like some bizarre alien noise machine, her dance moves are both disconcerting and hilarious (one bit was as if the models from Addicted to Love had killed Robert Palmer and taken over) and she's utterly magnetic. I feel like she's one televised Glastonbury appearance away from dazzling a lot of people who haven't heard of her before.

I'm hearing a bit of Sinead O'Connor in parts of the new album. Really want to see this live show now

i don't think i like her rhythm section

it's got this radio-ready pop-friendly indie-rock feel to it that just seems dead to me, like the 00s codification of backbeats and drum fill ideas for music that's required for traditional and economic reasons to have drums in it

This is the #1 thing that's wrong with her I think, like all her upbeat tracks have this stiff and jerky put-together-with-Lego quality to them that just does not work for me. I really dislike the clunkiness of the horns on the single right now, for example. I wish she'd loosen it up a bit more because you basically have to be Prince to pull off that kind of metronomic stiffness and Prince she aint.

I listened to the new album and when she lets the tempo drop and abandons the kitchen sink production choices she can be sublime.

Reading a lot of the advance press for this album you can really sense the desperation for a kind of Prince/Byrne/Kate Bush auterish figure to emerge but I'm still not convinced she's it.

she might not quite be there yet, but there's time IMO. The herky-jerkiness is a Marmite thing. You're either gonna hate it or just assume it's part of the package. And seriously, as a non-genre performer and artist and musician, there's no reason she couldn't be Prince on the next release, she's definitely got the scope and the talent. It's like every release has hinted at that kind of greatness and I feel like she's just getting warmed-up; just starting to shed her status as a leftfield musician to becoming a fully-fledged pop/rock artist.

she might not quite be there yet, but there's time IMO. The herky-jerkiness is a Marmite thing. You're either gonna hate it or just assume it's part of the package.

otm. i love it, but can see where it might grate. would love to see her double down on the implied funk, but then, yeah, she'd probably need a better rhythm section.

herky-jerky know how

There's a law for everything
And for St. Vincents that sing to keep
The drums that Matt DC will not allow
Herky Jerky nohow
Herky Jerky nohow oh

People I am feeling this record.

Yeah I've listened to it maybe one and a half times through and already a lot of the songs are embedded in my consciousness. A wizard, a true star.

A

this album's getting great reviews and i think it's deserved.

that song i prefer your love to jesus is thrilling, and is provocative and a little confrontational in exactly the way a great rock song should be.

I thought this was okay?

I've struggled with it all week.

The songs aren't sticking.

these songs are much more memorable to me than anything on her past albums.

i prefer your love to jesus, rattlesnake, and prince johnny are hooking-in deep.

makes me want to return to her earlier discs, to see what i may have been missing.

xposty Haven't heard this yet, but the first Sinead album really is a great example of how to combine slow temps, agit-funk, tunes, baroque production and stuff

"And I think, in some regards, that was her mission: not to be the exception but to be the new rule."

I. LOVE. HER.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-02-26/music/the-bulletproof-altar-of-st-vincent-annie-clark/full/

The synths on this album are amazing. The sounds are very 80s-ish, but they're not just used as signifiers or as pastiche - they are put to very different purposes. "Huey Newton" and "Regret" have been stuck in my head since I first heard the full album on Tuesday.

these songs are much more memorable to me than anything on her past albums.

― Daniel, Esq 2, Monday, February 24, 2014 3:10 PM (2 days ago)

otm, and i quite like her past albums

Heard Del the Funky Homosapien interviewed on the radio the other day, and he referenced a point David Byrne made in his book, namely that too much live performance these days tries to replicate the studio, but it was the performance that came first. I immediately thought of Annie Clark's evolution as a performer, something that seems to have accelerated since she crossed paths with Byrne. My only issue with her as a performer, though, is that despite all her creativity and talent, she's too wedded to a script live, whether it's the choreography, the arrangements, even the actual (per that Voice article) script. This may have gotten more pronounced since she toured with Byrne, too. But she's so mind bogglingly talented, imo, that I really want to see/hear her cut loose in a less affected robot way. Like when I saw her last and she covered the Pop Group. Sure, she may do that a lot, but there was an element of chaos to the performance that was really in the moment, as opposed to proceeding along a preordained performance path.

Byrne's very much about choreography etc and I think he got that in turn from Eno who has said himself that he has a problem with styles like free jazz because they're not affected by creative constraint. Did the Eno/Byrne axis ever embrace improvisation of any sort? Eno must have done some work in improv surely?

With the caveat that I have not yet seen her live: I don't have a problem with scripted, theatrical performances, in fact there's a part of me that really loves them. I also think that "cutting loose" in the live area is way overrated, and when you see any band performing in the middle of a year-long tour or whatever, there's little of any "live performance" that doesn't become scripted through repetition. (It's kinda shocking when you see a supposedly "live" band several nights on a tour, and see even the "natural" between song-banter repeated) I appreciate her for actually putting the effort into dreaming up something which will be appealing and interesting. I'm kind of fascinated by the craft she puts into it.

I think in a situation like that, where every dance move and every line is scripted, it gives her more freedom to go with musical improvisation if she chooses too, in fact I think it's probably more likely when every other part of it is taken care of.

(But to me, chaos is more interesting when it's a counterpoint against rigourous perfection)

But really, for the most part: improvisation and especially the act of "cutting loose" are way, way overrated.

xpost I mean, all of Eno's Roxy contributions, in the studio and live, were basically improvised; he never did the same thing twice. I guess he was always more clinical about chance, like as a means to an end but not necessarily an end in itself. Which may explain why he's spent so much time designing automatic systems to compose and play music, whether via his more primitive stuff with Fripp to his more current self-generating KOAN software.

I like scripted and choreographed stuff, but I've seen St. Vincent several times, and they've all been really ... stiff? By design, sure, but it's still a little tiresome. And I don't need to see her go totally free jazz (though that would be cool, too, to see her teamed with avant jazz sorts), just loosened up a bit. She's such a great guitarist.

Just curious if I'm alone here. Have any of you seen her a bunch and gotten the same vibe?

xxpost I like both, but yeah, one of the really great things about watching something like Stop Making Sense is the feeling that it's been totally pre-meditated and thought about before being performed.

I totally agree, but Stop Making Sense is choreographed and arranged (and filmed) to an almost ridiculously perfect degree.

This album reminds me of the last boring Neko Case record.

I still haven't heard it yet, but it's got to be better than that.

The New Yorker profile of Bruce Springsteen was pretty fascinating, in that it gave a glimpse of his rehearsals, which actually included testing out stage banter and seemingly "spontaneous" stuff, the idea being that when you're entertaining tens of thousands at once, there's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and that from pacing to performance, he wants to make sure something "works" or sounds right or whatever before he busts it out on stage.