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

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?

i guess it's fun to be the tail if you can actually wag the dog

I do think I have become a much kinder journalist, as a result of cancel culture.

I'm sorry, who are these people

The person who said that is British.

thought: i think, at this point, if pitchfork (or any other similar "major" publication) gives something a glowing review that's a good sign that i'll hate it.

another thought: i've given st. vincent a listen in the past because of the generally great reviews she's gotten. nothing has ever really resonated, but i've not hated anything i've heard either. this whole charade has put me off her probably for good. oh well. nothing gained, nothing lost.

i think, at this point, if pitchfork (or any other similar "major" publication) gives something a glowing review that's a good sign that i'll hate it.

I'm totally indifferent to the shit that gets reviewed favorably — it's not even that I hate it. It barely registers as music for me. These days I mostly hate-read the site when they review something I actually know about, like when Vijay Iyer puts an album out and they decide they care about jazz again, just to see all the shit they get wrong or misunderstand.

The site that best fulfills my "if you like it, I hate it" needs is Roger Ebert's old site. Their pool of critics has, collectively, the absolute worst fucking taste in movies.

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.

Its a shame Pitchfork can no longer destroy the corporate tyranny of... Travis Morrison

It's also just fucking wrong because old P4k used to do backboard-breaking dunks on corporate things like Jet or Jessie J or Panic at the Disco or Weezer and had no effect whatsoever, and now they're absolutely in thrall of every major label project also no no effect whatsoever

I wonder if Rick Ross ever recovered from this

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11296-trilla/

at the peak they could definitely take, for example in the case of tapes n' tapes, from playing a semi-decently attended thursday show in minneapolis to big festival appearances a month later

always heard rumors that toure` was proud of himself for "ending public enemy's hype" when he gave them a poor review for muse-sick n hour mess-age in rolling stone. and even if that's not true or embellished, it's based on some some semblance of truth. and that's pretty disappointing.

of course, now we're talking about toure` and he's always been a very reprehensible person.

i guess my point in bringing it up is that there's always going to an asshole in the mix somewhere.

if st. vincent really wanted to troll everyone hard, she'd cancel everything, shelf the album, and release an instrumental ambient album.

i think, at this point, if pitchfork (or any other similar "major" publication) gives something a glowing review that's a good sign that i'll hate it.

such as?

When checking out a record meant spending $10, there was something to her argument.

I mean we've been over every possible permutation of this argument 1 billion times, but Pitchfork is actually a bunch of largely freelance writers each with their own tastes not some monolithic entity

I don't understand why an individual who listens to an album and comes up with 20 questions is considered a "journalist" as if there was any actual research involved... the tabloid reporters who dug up the information about Clark's father's imprisonment and knocked on Clark's sister's door to confirm? then simultaneously forcibly outed Clark as a lesbian and the daughter of a jailbird in the Daily Mirror? those are journalists.

I do think I have become a much kinder journalist, as a result of cancel culture.

I'm sorry, who are these people

― 80's hair metal , and good praise music ! (DJP), Monday, May 3, 2021 4:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think this is an outlandish statement to make -- I definitely think over anything I write a lot more to make sure it doesn't have any connotations or plausible intentions I didn't mean. which is more criticism than journalism if we're going there, but in general I think that, on the balance, this is a positive development

ok so this 'journalist' is an idiot

just like the rest of us.

how's that new st vincent record?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/arts/music/st-vincent-favorites.html

Ny Times interview piece now out mentions album title but the q and a is just on Clark’s fave art , places, albums, and her guitar

NY Times interview is by freelancer Ol*via Horn

New song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ9iAlm-sJ8

Lots of fun things going on in this song. Such a good look + some incredible editing in the video.

Something something something Tori Amos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE

That was my first thought, that she was attempting to recreate Coppola's The Conversation without having ever seen The Conversation, but having seen Sabotage dozens of times.

The St. Vincent guitars are really nice but they’ve gone from ~$1600 to ~$2400 real quick. (The budget Sterling one isn’t nearly as nice.)

The old model has been discontinued and the new model (which matches this album) doesn't come out until June.

"down" is actually quite nice