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

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".

Pills was my favourite and stuck in my head after one listen, but I like the album a lot less after listening on headphones.

The only drags are the slow ones at the end but I'm making my peace with them. "New York" is quite gorgeous.

i love her last few albums but am having trouble connecting to this one, i think it's a combo of the more "pop" approach, the "personal" lyrics, and the relative lack of guitar, which i guess are all interconnected. i feel like the prerelease press/rhetoric about it being written with all these slick professional songwriters and taking a more confessional approach conditioned me to not like it as much. i don't hate it but just not getting into it yet.

Good album.

This is the most excited I've been about her music since "Actor," not quite sure why yet.

"Lorde (remember her?) "

wow yeah, that album dropped off the face of the earth didn't it. It's good though.

Apparently the live show was terrible?

Lorde's live show? Or St Vincent's?

i can't imagine a bad st vincent live show. I didn't know lourde toured for this album.

don't know why I put a 'u' in there, but I imagine you're talking about the show she did recently in the UK which sounds...interesting.

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.