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

Fame is a tight guitar driven song. This sloshes around a bit. Actually reminds me of 'All I Wanna Do' by Sheryl Crow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGr6i5Sar5s

...and throw in a word or two that rhyme with "fame".

It sounds like "Fame"

She looks a LOT like a well-known blonde actress in this video, but I can't think of whom. Cathy Moriarty? idk

The first few notes of the bass synth sound like 'Sweet Dreams'. But the lyrics are about what exactly? I suppose they make as much sense as Lou Reed's 'Lady Day'. But the comparison I keep coming back to is Muse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rf1Sj6EIFE
Lyrics that sound weighty but mean nothing (Bellamy is singing about his guitar yeah right), instrumental twiddlyness, style over substance, appearance over communicating anything.

FB ads are informing that she's offering online classes on prepared guitar techniques these days??

Do you mean the Masterclass course?

i'm not much of a fan of her but this new song is a definite improvement from the last album which was pretty dire

Oh I see that there's a whole Masterclass course on creativity and songwriting. In the ad I saw, she was demonstrating some prepared guitar techniques, e.g. approximating a ring modulator by weaving paper through the strings.

Really don't like anything about the new single. New York and Birth In Reverse weren't the best songs on the last two albums, but they still had me hyped for the release. Hopefully this doesn't represent the new album at all.

I hope it does. I crave this kind of kitchen sink alt funk.

the single cover looks like Tina Fey's character from Date Night when she's pretending to be a Russian prostitute

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP)

The song itself also sounds like it. Top comment on r/indieheads is: “ this has such drunk aunt at a family gathering vibes”.

the single cover looks like Tina Fey's character from Date Night when she's pretending to be a Russian prostitute

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP)

The song itself also sounds like it. Top comment on r/indieheads is: “ this has such drunk aunt at a family gathering vibes”.

Which is considered the best of her work among the ILX hardcore fans? The self-titled album seems to be thought of as some kind of peak elsewhere. I saw a festival warm-up type date in Cambridge toward the end of the last tour (2018) which was pretty great but eleven songs of the then-current album was a bit much.

self titled > actor > marry me > masseduction > ... stuff i don't remember

I think she's so talented, but has become increasingly exhausting. I don't really hear much in the direct way of Prince or Bowie (maybe a little bit of Iggy's "Idiot"), but as far as Beck goes it's very much in that "Midnite Vultures" mode.

Midnite Vultures >>>> Mellow Gold > Odelay > stuff

feel like i should like St V more than i do but oh well

She's obviously an immensely talented guitarist at the very least, but I do not like her production style at all and I can't shake the feeling she's not up to much conceptually either

I agree totally on all three points.

am i the only one getting betty davis vibes from this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5NUBIcEyU

I don't call myself a hardcore fan, but I have heard all her records except the Byrne collaboration. I'd pick Strange Mercy as the best, though I could see a case being made for any but her debut.

Her lead singles aren't always the best songs on the albums, but this song has a little less of the compressed, squashed synth sound of the last two records, which wasn't always successful.

Strange Mercy is still my favorite

As a non-expert, I agree w those who say she's most compelling as a guitarist, and live: When NPR live-streamed her SXSW around the time of Actor, the very studied approach (they also put up video of rehearsals for the show), of the songwriting, the orchestration the stylized movement, the lights, the hair, the makeup, the costumes, the vocal manner---all worked as a set-up for her gettin' down on the edge of the stage, shredding, for what seemed like quite a while, but not too much---also for instance elsewhere encoring with "Smells Like Teen Spirit"---look around the 'Tube if interested---the whole style-is-content, flash-is-substance, even works pretty well in such instances, I think.

This might expose me as a basic rockist but that video of her covering Big Black's "Kerosene" is still my favorite thing I've seen of hers

I’ve seen her live twice. She’s certainly a better than average guitarist but I also think she has been set up as a kind of standard bearer for Women Who Play Guitar and maybe that’s a burden.

Eh, if anything she makes me think she is simply bored of guitar (see also: Polly Harvey). But guitar or no, Clark clearly, consciously decided she wanted to Do Something Else, and transformed into this whole, affected, performance-art pop ... thing.

I think she's so talented, but has become increasingly exhausting.

She's obviously an immensely talented guitarist at the very least, but I do not like her production style at all and I can't shake the feeling she's not up to much conceptually either

This is pretty much how I feel now. Loved Actor, and I liked Strange Mercy, but sometime around then (can't remember if it was before or after her Byrne collaboration), the red flags started to pop up. I remember one show that was mostly great, but she kept going into these ridiculous long, pre-scripted monologues that kept killing the momentum. I forgot about that after the self-titled album came out - greater than expected and still my favorite. Masseduction was good too but for me it's where things start to go wrong. The thicker, glossier production still worked, but it didn't seem like continuing down that path was going to be a good idea either. Then came the Sleater-Kinney album - not a complete disaster but misguided, and they lost Weiss in the process. It's disappointing, but I hope the new one turns out all right. (I'm not too optimistic based on the single.)

I always had some difficulty squaring the hype about her guitar heroism with what her songs sound like.

The arty stuff gets in the way a bit. The guitar heroism comes out much better live.

^Yes and it’s not necessarily her fault. I think some fans and critics are projecting confused and complicated ideas onto her about how gender relates to virtuosity and guitars.

Xpost

that video of her covering Big Black's "Kerosene" is still my favorite thing I've seen of hers

I like her music across the board but this is my opinion also!

She's putting her guitar through a lot of stuff, iirc, so it might not get recognized as guitar. For example:

In the ad I saw, she was demonstrating some prepared guitar techniques, e.g. approximating a ring modulator by weaving paper through the strings.

But here's a glimpse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vRPmJx8bYs

Here she is running through some riffs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqS5W14crX8

I think what counts as virtuoso guitar has changed a lot in the last few decades.

Hmm. Well, I think she's very creative with her instrument, and can be because she knows it so well, which maybe doesn't count as "virtuoso," per se, but I bet she knows her guitar well enough to play what people *do* typically consider virtuoso. In that clip above, she casually drops in a Steely Dan intro, which, sure, does not necessarily count as virtuoso, but if you can casually do that you know what you're doing, probably.

I think what counts as virtuoso guitar has changed a lot in the last few decades.

I don't like her music or her artistic persona (that whole schtick an album or two ago where she made snarky videos to deflect common interview questions she thought were boring/stupid/beneath her soured me on her pretty much permanently), but the world already has one John Petrucci and doesn't need her to be another.

4m into the first video (which I'm watching second), lol that Noisey guy has never seen artificial harmonics before. The riffs in the 6 riffs video are mostly beginner-level, which is maybe the point of the video; I do think she is capable of harder things than "Aqualung" and gets a lot of interesting sounds, although I'm not really seeing a case yet that she gives Mary Halvorson a run for her money. What I meant, though, was that guitar heroism doesn't seem that central to the appeal of the songs that I hear so it seems odd that people seem to stress it as much as I see them do. (I've seen comparisons to Eddie Van Halen, Thurston Moore, and Tom Verlaine, all of whom foreground instrumental guitar work a lot more ime). I did like Actor well enough btw and I'm glad to see someone doing prepared guitar in pop music.

Nobody’s arguing that she needs to be a poodle shredder. Virtuosity in an art rock context is more like Belew with Talking Heads or Fripp with Bowie. She’s good but she’s not that. And again, she’s not saying she’s a virtuoso, my issue here is with the commentary around her that seems overwrought and pleading to me.

Again, xpost.

Oh yeah I've seen a Belew comparison too which um

snarky videos

(sorry for NME link): https://www.nme.com/news/music/st-vincent-interview-kit-videos-2134085

She is an extremely versatile and creative guitarist but it’s not clear until you watch her play live, imo.

I think it's less that people think she's a virtuoso because the notion of virtuosity has changed, and more people think she's a virtuoso because not that many people know or understand guitar, and there are relatively few younger people famous *for* playing guitar that seeing anyone play a guitar might as well be "virtuoso." But, sure, like Belew she is so clearly into her own thing that there's really not a lot of comparisons to what she's up to, which is one advantage of sounding weird or different.

Can Matt Sweeney play? I have no idea, he's always in bands though.

Anyway, she's a hundred times better than I'll ever be, so virtuoso enough for me! Still find her exhausting, though.

That’s what I’m saying though. The meaning of virtuosity has changed because the average music fan understands guitar less. I’m not even complaining about it really. Except in a sad suburban guitar playing dad way.

Virtuoso FX pedal stomper.

pff, when she plays I pay attention and I want to hear more, idgaf whether it's virtuosic or pedal filtered

TBF to Clark, I never get the feeling something like this could happen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dZwXnMrRU
(Bill Bailey's U2 bit)

https://townsquare.media/site/838/files/2021/02/stvincent-whosyourdaddy.jpg
A different aesthetic for each album isn't necessarily a dealbreaker - I wouldn't be a Bowie fan if it was - but this looks like it'll be all-style-no-substance to the point of it almost being an ad campaign for bourbon. And yes the elephant in the room is 'Young Americans' but Bowie released that album in the 70s, worked with many of the pre-eminent musicians in that genre, and was genuinely into that music - whereas this feels like copping an aesthetic.

Also that fucking ad copy: the artist who makes you expect the unexpected
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/e7/84/35e784330597d07f55accb1702518589.jpg
"No-one makes you expect the unexpected!"