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

I've been listening to this album in the car, mostly, and now that I'm listening on headphones that tend to be a little more bass-heavy I'm realizing how punchy the low end is on this album! To the extent I checked to see if I'd switched to some EQ preset that was doing wonky things.

it's not bad, per se, but this is compressed in some interesting ways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfYJt1O8ZjY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKbqntxRN4

I watched a decent quality version of her one-person show on YouTube and it really had me annoyed that I didn't go to it when it came here.

This album rips. Sequencing is cool in that it starts with the comedown song - all wasted and sad and the party starts fittingly with “pills”.

I like that side A/side B is readily apparent from the sequencing.

Totally. I love the slower songs near the end. The albums crammed with so many sonic details that there’s always something new and to hear. Usually the overly compressed production wouldn’t be my thing but it works here. Killer Floyd reference on “pills”

the new version of Slow Disco she just put out rules, I like it more than anything from the album

It’s great

I hope she puts out the solo piano/voice version of this record she supposedly has.

The acoustic performance linked above is wicked

She’s playing alongside Florence and chvrches at a festival here

Fast Slow Disco really deserves to be her first number one single. I'm obsessed with it right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNm0b2SCXxY

Damn, that's a great song.

yeah, that's a v cool "alternate version"

apparently co-written with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Williams_(singer)

Gorgeous song

dece, album version's better

Slow Disco became my favourite song on the album. I'm not sure I can pick between that and the remix. They're both so perfect in different ways. Is there any way this can actually be a hit for her? Maybe not a number one single (as it deserves), but could it at least be her Dancing On My Own?

that "don't it beat a slow dance to death?" melody at the end is definitely lifted from somewhere.

or maybe just stuck with me from the album version so nvm. awesome either way.

I love this version of the song but I'm really surprised at how early 2000s NME band the artwork is (particularly bearing in mind the considered aesthetic of the rest of Annie's ouevre).

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2018/06/fast-slow-disco-1527825993-640x640.jpeg

Upon absorbing Strange Mercy more I think it's gotta be Clark's best record. Songs like Cheerleader sing to be the template for the feel of a lot of the tracks, rhythm wise and even thematically there seems to be references to surgeon in a later song (also surgeon of course starts with the Brazil theme as well). MASSEDUCTION on the other hand has maximal production and not as much subtlety as the former record, sort of like if the whole record was played on a key chain guitar shooting off into the stratosphere, the energy is also far more anxiety ridden. Dunno, the production kind of gets in the way on the latest. Newest single takes the electronic tinged arrangements of Mass and dulls the gnarled edges a bit more, so perhaps it will be more successful. Not that Cruel wasn't a stand out single for instance but the newest single is less esoteric

*seem not sing

I'd be interested to see an albums poll for her. I'm guessing Strange Mercy would win, but I feel like it would be close.

what is happening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBuSKj3XNu8

had me wtf'ing for a minute but I see it's "just" a remix

she def gave it a st vincent feel

https://i.imgur.com/QG5OgcD.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/oxbiVeY.jpg

MassEducation:

01 Slow Disco
02 Savior
03 Masseduction
04 Sugarboy
05 Fear the Future
06 Smoking Section
07 Los Ageless
08 New York
09 Young Lover
10 Happy Birthday, Johnny
11 Pills
12 Hang on Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yLmAwGpPV8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqNvRMAKj-c

Out next week.

Sweet! Glad she followed thru and released it. Been waiting for this ever since she mentioned it during promo last year.

lol at people wondering why she re-arranged the tracklisting - I mean hang on me was such a massive downer of an opening track that it appearing last totally makes sense somehow to me here. Additionally, restructuring the order is a good way of making this sound even more fresh than just a simple re-tooling. excited

based on those two tracks, wondering if this is gonna be a spared-back collection like her tiny desk acoustic set? i mean that might be kind of cool but i hope it's not just that uniform

It's all piano. Doveman's piano playing is remarkable. Works on pretty much every track.

This is such a treat if you liked Masseduction

Great live performance:

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

given that i will not hear this for some time, can anyone give me more idea what it sounds like

i take it there is pedal steel and piano on every song (as mentioned) but how different are the songs to the originals, tempo wise, arrangement wise etc

finally listening to the piano version, EXCELLENT! 💯

this is a nice little video, the joke around 0:41 sure to please an ilxor or two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VW3TWNCnWE

http://molly-young.com/stvincent.html

"I walked home thinking about how unusual it is to experience
sustained dislike as an adult. When you're a kid and you have no control
over your time, you're constantly forced to be with people (kids, mainly)
who find you lame and annoying, which is painful. The primary perk of
being an adult is that you have the agency to avoid these situations.
Until you don't."

Surely Molly Young must see the metonymy of writing something like this, both the sentence in particular and the sum post.

Clark's job description: learn guitar, learn to sing. Write songs, research gear, stay on top of current trends. Perform excellent shows and record excellent albums. Produce work for self and for others.

Clark's actual job description: look excellent at all times. Navigate public social and romantic relationships. Navigate inquiry regarding sexuality and private life. Be amenable and gracious in the face of intrusion, either by consumers of your work, or by interviewers who believe they are entitled to feeling "not disliked" upon first/second meeting.

It always amazes me when arts journalists, either by turning author (and subjecting their own work to the critical gaze), or by incidents such as this, suddenly experience what content-creators have to experience every second of every day

I'm not a journalist, so I don't know how typical this experience is or what expectations they go in with. But the way I see it, they are doing a job that is meant to be mutually beneficial for the artist and publication. Having a base level of courtesy towards someone who is helping to facilitate this service to promote your music isn't a lot to ask for.

2 years ago there was a piece in the New Yorker (similar scenario, journo tags along while SV does summat else) so the writer here must have been wise to what the score was. She's a bit of a wind up merchant is about the size of it as far as i can tell. Also she's not above apologising if she thinks she got something wrong;

'The next morning, my phone buzzes. Clark’s messaged me on Twitter. “Dude!” she says, “I’m sorry I was a cock.” She explains that she was exhausted, “which is not an excuse”, but that she’d felt especially defensive because she’d been getting negative tweets about the show all day, and had thought my comments were an attempt to go for the jugular. “I really misread the interaction,” she says, “and have been feeling horribly guilty ever since. I thought you were just there to tell me my show sucked and I got real defensive and yeah, it went downhill from there.”'

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music-theatre/2017/11/it-s-cool-some-people-hate-my-show-st-vincent-fan-backlash-and-chinese

fgti otm

I have no idea why any writer would admit to this

right

St. Vincent Has a Cold (Shoulder)

There are plenty enough Annie Clark-hates-interviews stories going around that at this point any halfway competent writer should know that going in.

these are both right:

they are doing a job that is meant to be mutually beneficial for the artist and publication. Having a base level of courtesy towards someone who is helping to facilitate this service to promote your music isn't a lot to ask for.

I have no idea why any writer would admit to this

that said, Annie sounds *awful* in that link piscesx posted. :(

awful? really? seems like typical aloof rock star behavior - exactly what one would expect profiling celebrities.

awful? really? seems like typical aloof rock star behavior - exactly what one would expect profiling celebrities.

I take it you've never actually done it, then. Most musicians are very nice and polite and welcoming in an interview context. They understand that it's a transaction, and they make it as pleasant as possible. Ones who've had decades-long careers are particularly so - I've never interviewed him myself, but I've heard that, for example, Robert Plant is a fantastic person to talk to. I always heard the same thing about David Bowie. Rob Halford of Judas Priest is one of the nicest people you could ever spend an hour with - he listens, thinks about your questions, and answers in paragraphs. Even people whose art is sometimes off-putting or alienating are great in interviews - I had a fucking blast talking to Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Clark, on the other hand, comes off like someone who really dislikes doing interviews and therefor comes up with ways to short-circuit or "subvert" the process that she probably thinks are really smart and cool, and which I'm sure amuse her greatly, but just wind up making the writer (who's getting paid very little money to be there, and may even be taking time away from a day job to do it) feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. It's a shitty approach to something that is in her job description (if you want to make art for public consumption, you're going to have to talk about that art with journalists), and the fact that she gets such fawning press despite this spoiled-child stuff is baffling to me.

Booming post unperson.

I can see fgti's post which makes a lot of sense, but ultimately this isn't about artists having to jump through hoops. I keep coming back to the bit saying 'St. Vincent doesn't need to be in GQ, why did she agree to this in the first place?' Regardless of whether that is because of people surrounding her, it's never a good idea to be unkind to people imo.

I have done it. Some people are nice, some are fucking assholes. Comes with the territory.