St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION (5th album, October 13 2017)

My reactions to her music are normally aesthetic rather than emotional, if that makes sense. Which is why an aesthetic shift is a big deal if it goes the wrong way for me.

I like the new songs. I wonder if this is sponcon though

https://image.ibb.co/gWGKTw/Screen_Shot_2017_10_09_at_6_14_50_PM.png

her classically minded, sweetly coy 2007 debut Actor

I could understand making a mistake like that if you're an outsider writing about Guided By Voices or someone else with a zillion albums, but St. Vincent has, like, five.

jesus I didn't realize she'd been around that long. in my mind she was always a strictly '10s artist. i went and looked at her discography at went ohhhh yeah! at the cover of Actor. was Love This Giant seriously 5 years ago???

Yeah, she's been around long enough that people originally cared she was friends with Sufjan Stevens...so you know it's been a while.

37 state themed albums ago

and she was in the Polyphonic Spree! bizarre

That's more of a footnote. Hundreds of people were in the Polyphonic Spree.

(Mainly I just wanted to clown on Sufjan's 20-teens irrelevance.)

I will assert that his last album is very good and easily his best as penance for my own sufjan clowning

yea i agree although i can't really listen to it, i like illinois more but carrie & lowell prevented him from becoming stuck in the aughts

seven swans is all time but carrie and lowell is a good contender for best

Another new one. It's very At War With The Mystics.

https://youtu.be/hwFx0ROBf7o

hmm not for me, too concept-y

Good album. Definitely not as instant as the self titled. Love how she uses her voice throughout, some really incredible performances.

pills really reminds me of the stuff she was doing with byrne

CD arriving tomorrow so not bothered d/l the leak

this album is fucking incredible

Listening to this now - New York and Los Ageless didn't turn me on much but I like them a lot better in context. Title track sounds so much like a lost Prince track, it's scary.

yeah, this album seems so much better than the singles in isolation

Her best record to date.

CD arrived

was listening to this earlier, some of it reminded me of bill nelson a bit - obviously the flashy guitar playing but also that particular odd melodic sense and the oblique lyrics

plus also y'know

https://image.ibb.co/jPnQqb/annienelson.jpg

Is this a good choice for first st Vincent then?

I still like Actor the best, but you'll get the idea starting anywhere.

I want to say, give or take, I've liked each album a little less than the next, as she's gone more and more high-concept/arch.

xxp I'd say this is a great choice, but I'd commit to giving the whole album a spin

Pills is odd.. the chorus is horribly kitschy and nothing else is too interesting, but that coda - holy shit, it's incredible

is the song successful if the crash is better than the high?

I've listened to little else in the last 24 hours and I'm fully on-board with this. It's probably her most consistent album yet.

Slow Disco is my current favourite, even though it's way too short. Such a beautiful arrangement.

Anyone else getting Beth Gibbons vibes from Smoking Section? She sounds so much like her when she repeats, "it's not the end".

if concept level is the factor you're going off of, i'd say start with STRANGE MERCY, and if you get into that and enjoy ~high-concept~ music, go into ACTOR and ST. VINCENT and MASSEDUCTION. if ~~high-concept~~ isn't so much your thing, go into MARRY ME.

i think strange mercy is her best ablum by far, but this is good too, about on par with the last one.

I think Actor is still my favourite. There's barely anything between the new one, Strange Mercy and St. Vincent.

She does sound a lot like Beth Gibbons on the “it’s not the end” part and the piano part also sounds like Portishead... it doesn’t seem accidental.

the chorus to "Los Ageless" is also very Portishead

Listening to this for the first time now after seeing a Twitter comment that hinted it was influenced by Art Angels. I don't know how much that is really true, but I'm still liking this quite a bit so far. It seems less mannered and more fun than her previous albums.

Also, until this evening, I thought the album was called Mass Education.

since "nurse" i've neglected St. Vincent being a part of my musical life, not sure why. what a mistake, she is the best

On a couple of listens this seems really good; my fears from the singles are feeling a bit silly now.

I also thought it was Mass Education.

Has this record been ruined at the mastering stage or is she just addicted to shitty overcrowded midrange as an aesthetic choice?

In terms of the songs themselves this is probably her strongest record yet but she seems to pick up a new set of annoying mannerisms with every record, just as soon as she sheds the old ones. I want to like her more than I actually do.

She's definitely into overcrowded midrange. I just take that as her aesthetic now.

Her work is full of that sort of stuff, the jerky drums on one of the previous albums, and I'm given to understand she's an amazing guitarist but that guitar sound she's settled on is just horrible. I get the sense of an artist consistently trying to sound less talented than she is and it's just maddening - thinking about how much better the title track could have sounded if every element wasn't just piled on top of one other in the middle. I suspect it's also because her most obvious rock touchpoints (Bowie, Talking Heads in particular) really aren't mine at all.

Talking Heads and Bowie are both very synthetic-sounding for rock artists, too, which is obviously what she's been going for over the years. Part of me really likes her guitar tones, that buzzing modernity that almost sounds like she wants to be playing a synth instead. Even when she's overstuffing things (which is always, obviously) there's still loads of detail, which is what rescues it for me. And the way she layers things feels more sophisticated in terms of soundstaging than it could be; there's one song here with a really faint synth line or something over in the left channel (can't recall which after only two listens) that another artists would have inflated and moved more central.

Did you see what she was wearing on Jools Holland the other night? She's come a long, long way from the shapeless grey sweater thing and black curls on the cover of Marry Me, and it feels like she's doing the exact same thing with both image and sound.

she is an amazing guitarist but that only really comes across when you see her live, because recorded her stuff is so fucked with it doesn't really sound like a guitar (live it often doesn't either which is why it's cool but when you listen to an album these days, there are so many sounds that could be made by anything it's difficult to parse it out)

I have appreciated St Vincent albums before but not really cared all that much about going back to them after a cursory listen. I'm currently on "Pills" and this album is definitely going on my "faves of 2017" list and is making me a LOT more interested in her previous work.

Marrow from Actor was the tune that first made me go ‘oooh’, if that helps.

I have appreciated St Vincent albums before but not really cared all that much about going back to them after a cursory listen. I'm currently on "Pills" and this album is definitely going on my "faves of 2017" list and is making me a LOT more interested in her previous work.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP),

This is where I'm at.

I'm impressed with how Lorde (remember her?) and St. Vincent have adapted Jack Antonoff's big beat approach to their own ends.

My immediate favorites are "Pills" and "Fear the Future".

why be evasive?

Seriously. The obvious answer is "usually, yes." I mean, I've never - in 22 years - had an interview disintegrate into outright hostility (I have had one person hang up on me), but if she's putting it out there, grab it and see what happens.

w/r/t whether SV is at a level to make her music without doing press - or more precisely, doing press she wants to do, when she wants to do it - i mean, i really have no idea how much $ she makes, what kind of financial obligations she has, whether she gives a shit if people buy tickets or not, etc., etc., not to mention the various promotional pressures she feels.

but just generally speaking, i would imagine Annie could either (a) find partners to help her start her own label and release music that way, a la Wilco, or (b) tell labels straight away she wants to control the press stuff, and if they don't like it, they can go sign someone else. i'm quite sure there'd be labels that would love to work with her anyway.

until she does one of those things, she signs up for putting some control of press obligations in someone else's hands.

and she can handle that any way she wants, of course. but taking out her frustrations about it on someone who is just trying to do their job isn't a great look.

i thought "wow you sure are married and live in a beautiful loft"

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 2:02 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not my finest moment

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 2:02 PM (four hours ago

no this is a keeper

There's literally nothing keeping St. Vincent from saying "I'm just not gonna do press for this record"

Even if her records aren't doing Adele numbers, she's got producer gigs, festival appearances, gear deals, movie syncs in the fuckin Twilight movies ... she's prolly got racks

No, you always have to keep doing press, esp at that level, the artist is a business investment and you can't make decisions like that without having arguments with labels et al.

It's people like Will Oldham who have that luxury

I interviewed her around the summer of 2010 and I just have fond memories of our conversation, tbh.

so having just come from a concert by an artist who was extremely anxious and uncomfortable on stage, and having belatedly realized my wondering if it was some kind of "performance" was both a natural human instinct and ludicrously overanalytical, i'm possibly more inclined than typically towards the theory that ms. clark was having a shitty day and reacted to it by being an asshole.

Maybe so

What’s your excuse for the interviewer posting a weird tell-all on her Tumblr? Was she also just having a shitty day?

Maybe her first shitty day (as an adult!). That last paragraph is something else.

I was fired from my job at one of the major national music magazines because Ozzy didn't like the questions I was asking him and hung up on me. The questions were indeed obtrusive and insipid, which was the name of the game as far as my boss was concerned. To this day, it was the only remotely unsuccessful interview experience I ever had.

My girlfriend at the time was a music publicist, and she believed the situation should have been mitigated by the fact that, being that this was 2003, the entire world knew that Ozzy was an irritable dim bulb (and he surely was taxed by shit Sharon made him do at the time, which was unprecedented by the standards he had known previously). Frankly, my boss (well known in the music press environment for being impossible. over his head, and ignorant of the business he was in) and I hated each other and this was the pretext he needed to axe me. And I was overjoyed to get away from him.

But the bottom line is that it doesn't matter if the interview subject is uncooperative. If you are acting as a professional interviewer, your responsibility is to get the goods. I didn't, and faced the consequences. But Young did get the goods, based on a perfectly serviceable piece by GQ's standards. Yet she is offended that Clark was indifferent and is moved to complain in public.. Will Welch is the new editor at GQ, and he may be charged to keep pace with modern journalism, which Welch very well could believe involves tolerating freelancers complaining in public about a professional interaction that occurred on GQ's behalf—because everybody has to talk about everything in public constantly. It wouldn't have been enough to privately complain to Nasty Little Man, or to Will Welch, or to her spouse in the nice loft or her friends. But if I was Welch, I would not use Young again.

David Bowie and Rob Halford were both indeed incredibly pleasant, thoughtful, generous in conversation.

seems like she's taken the note down

What’s your excuse for the interviewer posting a weird tell-all on her Tumblr? Was she also just having a shitty day?

― fgti's romance (flamboyant goon tie included)

outside of professional music writers, nobody actually cares about the interviewer as far as i can tell

but i can be really out of the loop and i'm prepared to be wrong about this

my main question is "why is this interviewer still using tumblr"

i mean this seems like prime tweetstorm material

if it was a tweetstorm ppl on here would ask why it wasn't a blog post

I mean, when you interview artists for a living, someone asks you like once a month which one was the nicest and who was a real jerk. And the answers - ime, at least - are always boring and disappointing. She should've just saved her SV experience for that.

I quite enjoy it when a writer describes the anti-social behavior of a subject, but that's just me.

There are times where it kind of creates empathy for the anti-social subject-- I always felt kind of sad about Lou Reed's chronic frustration that nobody was interested in all the reading he'd done regarding signal deterioration and buffering re: his guitar tone

Did anybody archive the note? Apparently she's done this before with other profiles.