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

*"Don't ask questions about _____" policy.*

This reminded me of the time I telephone interviewed a band who were promoting some live shows for a brewery. I was asked not to talk about getting drunk/messy on alcohol. Obviously, I did. This was when I discovered that PRs listen in. I was a naive journalist.

If you cant get the personal basis for this request for exception, i dunno. Not that i think it’s unforgiveable, just cmon, that’s a maelstrom for her—

I used to really like this artist when they weren't famous for bullshit

It saddens me to see the backlash she is getting, TBH. I think she's a very talented musician; that run from Actor through s/t is a pretty perfect run of three albums that show steady and impressive progress and absolutely any artist would be lucky to do as well. Like most musicians, she might be kind of a fucking pain in the ass and have an ego. Whatever. I think the press thing for the last album where journalists had to crawl through a tunnel was funny. I think her new thing is contrived and not to my taste. Whatever!

I was yesterday years old when I learned she got her start in The Polyphonic Spree.

It really is insane watching 15 years of nerds hyperbolically overpraising indie rock people and then just absolutely tearing them down on some "Actually, this was never good"

cf. CYHSY, Tune-Yards, Grimes, AnCo, Arcade Fire...

 I think the press thing for the last album where journalists had to crawl through a tunnel was funny. 

she sounds like an asshole

wait polyphonic spree? woah

Are there really people, like on ILX of all places, that didn't know she was in the Polyphonic Spree? that was the main reason I dismissed her in the first place! and then I came around to her circa Strange Mercy and then etc.

Are there really people, like on ILX of all places, that didn't know she was in the Polyphonic Spree?

I had no idea until now. But I'm not exactly a fan either.

oh man this explains so much

it was the main talking point when her first record came out

Huh. I just knew about the Sufjan connection.

It really is insane watching 15 years of nerds hyperbolically overpraising indie rock people and then just absolutely tearing them down on some "Actually, this was never good"

cf. CYHSY, Tune-Yards, Grimes, AnCo, Arcade Fire...

― bruce spr!ngisH3r3 (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 27, 2021 9:59 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's almost as if none of it matters

she must’ve left The Spree before the Mother 13 incident on Mt. Everest.

To be fair, everyone was in The Polyphonic Spree

To be fair, everyone was in The Polyphonic Spree

So far, have there been any post-millennial indie artists who have been acclaimed, derided, and then rehabilitated?

have any died at 27? i actually hate having typed that, because it's atrocious, but the tropes they predate memes

shockingly old when I learned the founder of Polyphonic Spree was also founder of Tripping Daisy

A band superior in every way.

This thread is increasingly confirming to me that for much of the computer-owning world, musicians are indistinguishable from magic cards or pogs or something

I hear St. Vincent didn’t tell a journalist that their round of pogs was “for keeps”

very prog pog whiney drop

is it true a st vincent interviewer got sonned over a pog beef?

So far, have there been any post-millennial indie artists who have been acclaimed, derided, and then rehabilitated?

Afaict once they hit a certain level every indie or adjacent act gets a pass to coast forever. Flaming Lips, Spoon, Arcade Fire, etc., doesn't really matter what any of us think of them, or how long it's been since they released a particularly acclaimed album, they're going to be filling venues of a certain size forever. The closest I can think of an exception could be a group like M83 (that maybe self-sabotaged?) or Sufjan, who threw everyone off after his breakthrough. Bon Iver, though, is a good example of a group that got huge, threw everyone off with a zigzag, but somehow still ended up on top.

that stage where you think they aren't popular anymore but are actually way more popular than they were when they had "buzz"

Maybe this is all just a layered PR blitz for the new album that somehow plays into her new character.

This new album is supposedly set in the early 70s, so maybe the character is Nixon?

New podcast interview on Midnight Chats recorded in early April. Most of the way through it and she seems perfectly amiable. I'm not really that interested in this album so *shrugs* but at least it's not weird or awkward or aggressive. Just a heads up for the actual St. Vincent fans here.

this feels like copping an aesthetic

Introducing Goldie, the brand new, reimagined St. Vincent signature guitar from Ernie Ball Music Man.

With roasted maple neck and gold foil topped pickups of course because it's 2021.

that is one fugly guitar

i love her guitar
just cool to see a sig that's not just another retread fender model

https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/513218128.webp?mw=1000&mh=562&q=70

"IT'S ROASTED!"

The shape is fine, it's the way it's being redressed to fit the aesthetic of each album cycle.
https://www.musicconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/STVMss-620x420.jpg
(from 'Masseduction')

ah, I like the new ones a lot more than those, the three colors are good and I like the how the gold saddles in the chrome bridge match the gold foil pickups

but you know....if it weren't for making endless slight variations to the same models every year there wouldn't be a guitar busines

my biggest problem is I HATE the ernie ball headstock in general and it really clashes with this design

Yeah there wouldn't be like a million different models of Strat and Les Paul otherwise.
I think the saddles are brass because that is currently *a thing* in the biz. St. Vincent is playing an old guitar with gold foil pickups in that Noisey video upthread but again these pickups are *a thing* right now.
Agreed on the EB headstock - even Fender make some concessions to making the headstock a slightly different shape between different models.

I dont mind the ernie ball headstocks at all. It does look like the new ones have a REVERSE headstock though.

oh yeah I know gold foil is big and brass saddles I just think the new model looks really nice aesthetically with those flashes of gold, I wouldn't touch those Masseducation ones with a 10ft pole

yeah the bright colors on the older models look cheap, prefer the new models.

I played one of these in guitar center and it felt weird to hold but it takes me a very long time to adjust to different guitars.

I prefer the headstock reversed on these. First thing I'd do is replace the volume/tone knobs, though.

anyone heard the record?

I've deleted this post several times over the last few weeks, but now I got to say it:

I thought St. Vincent was the partner of Elon Musk.

xp did it leak? I don't keep up with leaks anymore. I'll listen when it gets delivered (hopefully on release day).

https://studyhall.xyz/newsletters/digest-5-3-2021/

I reached out to Madden, who is declining to name the publication at this point, but described it as “an online-only, independently-run publication based in the UK.” She wasn’t threatened into removing the interview from her website, she explained, but began to feel guilty about the decision to go over her editors’ heads. “We had not agreed on a fee for the piece, but the editor offered to pay me double if I took the piece down (I then refused any money from the publication),” Madden explained to me in an email. “I felt I was guilt-tripped into taking it down.”

St. Vincent’s management company, MBC, had alluded to the possibility of legal action and the publication got scared, according to Madden — but it also seems they wanted to maintain a working relationship with the company. “The piece was killed because the publication wanted to preserve their relationship [with MBC] and the possibility of legal action was thrown around (they asked the publication whether they had lawyers),” alleged Madden, continuing, “MBC didn’t reach out to me personally ...They blamed the editor for commissioning the piece since it was through them that I was given access.”

“I felt the publication's relationship with [MBC] was privileged over my relationship with the publication, simply because they had more to lose and gain from the former,” Madden continued. “I believe they felt genuinely very threatened by St. Vincent's team.”

Weird that my assertion that her saying "the law and corporations reinforce one another and the law unfailingly permits corporations to win" was a wild embellishment of the truth turned out to be totally true!

just gonna go ahead and guess it was the quietus?

Still don't understand what was in that interview that was even remotely worth the bad look of threatening legal action against any outlet.

The guilt-trip thing doesn't at all square with what she said before ("the fact it doesn’t exist on the internet tonight goes to show that the law and corporations reinforce one another and the law unfailingly permits corporations to win").

also they said in the original post that someone from mbc did contact them. almost like we're dealing with an unreliable narrator here.

yeah. . . almost.

(smirk emoji)

https://eleanorhalls.substack.com/p/emma-madden-on-the-viral-fallout

Eleanor: It’s more threatening when its opaque. You don’t know who the enemy is. Was it always like this? Or do journalists have even less freedom, less power, now?

Emma: I feel like we have less power than ever before. I mean, even 15 years ago, Pitchfork could put up a really terrible review and that album wouldn't be listened to. You put up a terrible review now and it actually benefits the artist. I think people are more skeptical of journalists than ever before. And that works in the corporations’ favour and bigger artists like St. Vincent's favour.

i'm not sure if emma's assertion here is correct, but is it me or is weird that emma, or anyone, would think it's a good thing that a journalist once could have prevented an album from being listened simply by writing a negative review, and would mourn the loss of that awesome power?