St Vincent - s/t (25 February 2014)

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.

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

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:19 AM (6 minutes ago)

wtf, they have almost nothing in common?

Singing archly over static beats.

Take issue with static in regard to this album.

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.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:21 PM

If you can find that, please can you drop that on the Image Bands thread, because this is *exactly* what I was getting at. That this notion of authenticity and spontaneity is completely scripted and cultivated, and I find this stuff so fascinating.

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

― j., Thursday, February 20, 2014

I think she mostly manages to transcend this, but I recognize the concern

Yeah, that's fascinating re: Springsteen.

I know a band who got the audience to sing 'happy birthday' to the drummer every night on one tour, each day claiming it was his birthday. The shit you think is funny when you're locked on a coach / in a van / etc for days or weeks on end.

Singing archly over static beats.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:34 AM (1 minute ago)

broad strokes, but okay. don't hear the st. vincent beats as "static" myself. there's a twitchy kind of swing moving things along, and a lot more variety & propulsion than what you get from neko case. the arch delivery has sometimes turned me off in the past ("chloe in the afternoon"), but it isn't bothering me here.

If you can find that, please can you drop that on the Image Bands thread, because this is *exactly* what I was getting at. That this notion of authenticity and spontaneity is completely scripted and cultivated, and I find this stuff so fascinating.

― Bipolar Sumner (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 3:38 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah totally. It's been my dream to get my band to do a local show where we mime the whole thing on cardboard cutout instruments, complete with taped stage banter on a backing track etc.

I remember going to see the Mighty Boosh live several years ago back when they were popular. It was the last leg of their tour and I remember laughing like a drain. I was disappointed to find upon buying the DVD later that all the gaffs and 'bits that went wrong' had obviously been tried and tested several times over the course of the tour.

i really tried with this album but i do not get her at all. lo-fi indie sounds are beyond my understanding, i should learn from this

lo-fi? maybe the drums are a bit drum-machiney but... I mean this barely resembles indie music to me any more. i'm not sure what it is, just guitar-pop I guess?

yeah, not hearing anything particularly "lo-fi" abt this. maybe "distorted" is what we're after?

This is close to being my thing. Rhythmically, in particular, I hear some affinity with Tune-Yards's whokill, one of my favourite albums of recent times. I'm just not hearing a lot of really great melodies or songs ideas.

i think i mean lo-fi? horrible drum sounds, cluttered production, sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe, my usual complaints with this style of music. i don't think i'm going to go back to it to make this a productive semantic discussion tho

feel like this album aims for prince in places and comes out sounding more like beck, it's about as funky as cardboard. i do like the eurythmics-iness of digital witness though

Crossposting to the Image Thread:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all

definitely have no idea why anyone even brought up prince in the first place, seems wildly off-base to me. beck makes sense though (and i've never liked him either) (and i would call most of his stuff lo-fi too)

fidelity is a question of how well a recording reproduces what was originally played. so distortion is only "lo-fi" if it is introduced by the recording process. many xposts

Singing archly over static beats vs sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe

It's a wrong-off

I don't think stuff like this is lo-fi, it's just hyper stylized in its distortion and abrasiveness, like Dave Fridmann productions (think: Flaming Lips).

I think "sounds like it was recorded in a drainpipe" counts as lo-fi, since you are saying the whole album sounds like it was run through a pretty dramatic filter? (which I don't hear)

I have similar issues with John Congleton, producer, as I do with Dave Fridmann, and co-sign on "lo-fi", though I would just say "blown out American indie". Every sound was a nice sound! good sound! and then it was run through a reverse-DI into a Death By Audio pedal and then an Electrix roving filter and back through a refurbished Gates compressor and I picture a guy being all like "whoaaaaaa sounds awesome"

Congleton also produced the new Angel Olsen album, which I also disliked.

I don't know Congleton and he has worked on some records I love and I don't like to play the blame game re: producers. But yeah, sometimes an indie record goes for that "pedal board the size of a canoe" sound and I don't like that sound. This is not a bad sounding record! I like it, but can definitely agree with lex on the "lo fi"

this is why you have to play words with friends while recording the album. so you don't run everything through a pedal at the end and think it's awesome.

Congleton also produced the new Angel Olsen album, which I also disliked.

haaaa i tried this last week and couldn't get into it either for exactly the same reason (though was more frustrated with olsen b/c i felt like there were some really striking songs trying to get out from under the lo-finess)