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

She has never been a stoner.

from the guardian piece

you don't say

^^ Oh my, I somehow forgot about the 'Pearl' nonsense from BFL (that album was good, tough).

Same brand of wig.

I remember one show that was mostly great, but she kept going into these ridiculous long, pre-scripted monologues that kept killing the momentum.

Arhhh yes, this happened when I saw her and it was very please stop now.

Between the s/t and Masseduction I can't think of an act for whom my enthusiasm dropped so severely from album to album; not since the days of Animal Collective at least.

Loved Actor, thought "Cruel" was great, S/T was very near the top of my EOY ballot for the year. Even enjoyed the Byrne collab quite a lot. Other than the monologues, the live show was fantastic. I was a fan.

But Masseduction felt off - something false, a little pretentious and irritating about it, like those live monologues birdistheword mentioned upthread. Something about it was trying too hard, like a guest at a party trying to impress people by making grand, outlandish claims about themselves. There was something "cocainey" about it (not that I'm insinuating anything about SV at all, it just came off that way). The humility and nuance of Actor was all but gone, replaced, ironically, with an actorly persona.

Not so much in the music as the execution, I can't get into the recent stuff for much the same reasons I can't get into Lana Del Rey. I'm totally into performers adopting personae to augment their music and to find new angles into their own style, but with SV all it seems to do is obfuscate the artist herself (who is interesting) with a less interesting veil.

it's funny - this seems to be the minority opinion in general but mine is the exact opposite of that (didn't like the early albums at all, think masseduction is by far the best thing she's ever recorded). haven't gotten into this yet/may never, but only because I don't like the music it's trying to pastiche

I don't think that sonically it's a tremendous leap from what she's done before, but I'm having trouble separating the music from the image. If I were to hear the song on its own, would I still be thinking "Hmm, sounds like Eurythmics parodying Fame-era Bowie parodying sixties blue-eyed soul"? Or would I think it sounds like St Vincent being St Vincent?

Maybe too early to tell and I should reserve judgement till I hear the album. I didn't love Strange Mercy save for a couple of songs, and even the S/T had a few which actively annoyed me.

Masseduction is great

I really like masseduction myself

Same. Actor and the S/T are my favourites but Masseduction didn't seem like a dip in quality at all. Based on her latest singles that dip is coming.

I really like what she did on marry me, thought actor was ok, skipped to masseduction and really liked it a lot. It seems v consciously performative in some ways (by which i mean not stream-of-conscience or like, rawly emotive?), but I think it goes off really well.

I have no opinion yet of what she’s doing now, yet, I’ve not heard it. As a type she’s always come off to me as “very-smart drama kid,” which sounds dismissive but I sorta just mean— that’s the only heuristic I have for what seems to be going on.

Same. Actor and the S/T are my favourites but Masseduction didn't seem like a dip in quality at all. Based on her latest singles that dip is coming.

― kitchen person, Wednesday, April 7, 2021 10:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

here comes the new jersey thread

never have liked st. vincent, but am always willing to give her a chance, because women in music yeah. this new song sounds like 70s joni mitchell made by someone who has never actually heard any 70s joni mitchell; only had it poorly described to them by a different person who is not very articulate and knows very little about how music is recorded.

listening to "pay your way in pain" now and jfc. this is just bad. what even is this music?

playing the other song again. kind of fascinated by how terrible it is.

does anyone remember when jewel went all teeny bopper pop and then when the album failed, she said it was an ironic post-modern artistic statement? feels like annie may be setting the table for one of those. but i hope not.

That Jewel album debuted at #2 and went gold, which isn't really "failing"

still, isn't a Jewel going gold a downgrade?

Well.

https://www.emmamadden.com/post/st-vincent-told-me-to-kill-this-interview

....I don't know if I can bear to read the actual interview, but this aggressive press management a la Chance is not at all surprising

it's kinda hard to understand why she wanted it killed so badly. did she think that just not answering when asked about her views on prison abolition etc. was a bad look? but i don't think she really handled that badly. being all 'i don't want to get into politics' is a much better look than offering up some very poorly thought out political view. otherwise she just comes across the same way she usually does (a little annoying) with it seeming a bit weird how uninterested she is about talking about her dad when that was a big part of the PR for this album etc. but like not any worse than usual or anything

yeah, i don't get why she would want it pulled, what an ultimately innocuous interview

I thought I had done a not-so-good job the night before. I ended the call thinking I hadn’t asked the right questions. St. Vincent and I didn’t feel like a good match in conversation

Agreed.

maybe she should just stop doing press since it seems to make her miserable

I like her answer about Greta Garbo, i mean for a standard pre-album release phone interview there's some good stuff in here!

I get the feeling that she and her publicists have read the room on the backstory of her father getting out of prison, realized that didn't land well, and now regret it.

as good a guess as any

really shitty of st. vincent, not terribly surprised

but also that was a pretty poorly conducted and awkward interview, you have to have that sense when someone has "closed the door" on a certain line of questioning, you're not going to get what you want out of them and pursuing it further will just cause them to shut down

I get the feeling that she and her publicists have read the room on the backstory of her father getting out of prison, realized that didn't land well, and now regret it.

― akm, Monday, April 26, 2021 11:27 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

i hadn't thought of that but i bet this is totally what happened

omg went to prison for a penny stock pump and dump, how incredibly Highland Park

if one were to 'consolidate the influences of their parents', would one then owe a lower emotional interest?

This oughtn't account for much as it's a personal feeling and you don't know me / can't get inside my head etc, and also I can be wrong and maybe regret it when reading this again in a few years' time... but I've realised I can't seem to be able to push play on a St Vincent album since forever, because my BS detector keeps suggesting to me she may really be a bit of an entitled prat, which is also how I basically came to feel about one of her role models i.e. Prince. With both of their musics, it all seems to scream, "Me, Me, Me" in my face; their PR demeanors, to go by this latest article on StV, also seem very alike. I had grown tired of her attention-getting shticks over the years - could be interviews, album cover photos, something in the live presentation - so much so that half a single interview would be enough to put me off having a listen to a new album of hers until the next one. "Contrived" is the operative word. Which all is to say that this latest thing hasn't really surprised me. Some work, too much work that stands in the way of my simple willing to have a listen in order to find out what she does - not who she is, or wants to project how she wants to be perceived.

I'd like to know if anyone is with me on this, or whether my intuition about Annie Clark is terribly off the mark.

If anything, the interviewer should be embarrassed for being ill prepared and awkward for the interview. Can't say I see a reason why the St. Vincent team would be so against this, at least nothing worth the bad press that comes with trying to have it killed.

but also that was a pretty poorly conducted and awkward interview, you have to have that sense when someone has "closed the door" on a certain line of questioning, you're not going to get what you want out of them and pursuing it further will just cause them to shut down

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, April 26, 2021 12:29 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, probably why the "pursuing it further" happened close to the 30-minute mark

(also, don't most major artist PRs have a stated "don't ask questions about _____" policy going in? or is this just at the megacelebrity level?)

interviewer def. should have dropped it, dunno what she thought she was going to get. Also would it kill interviewers to ask directly about the music? fucking hell. so tired of this type of interview with musicians.

do not trust this writer

it wasn't just the dad stuff, this is just so clearly one where you just let it go

I guess last year’s riots brought abolition towards the mainstream, during the time you were making this record, which is partially about your father’s time in prison. How did that square with your thoughts on prison and the US carceral system?

Well I have plenty of thoughts on it, I’m not totally sure how it’s relevant to this.

Well I was wondering if you have a standpoint on it or if you’d rather just be ambiguous?

I have so many thoughts and opinions, I don’t presume that my thoughts and opinions are relevant on every subject though. I don’t have that much hubris.

a) much of the interview is, in fact, about the music; questions about inspiration for the music are still questions about the music, given that they're why it exists

b) it doesn't name the publication, for all you know it's more of a general-purpose outlet that isn't going to be interested in how many seconds an A sharp was held

c) so fucking tired of the "why don't they TaLk AbOuT tHe MuSiC?????" shit in general

let's get down to it -- why these notes? and why in this order?

(plus, for what it's worth, multiple advice-for-interviewing-musicians guides specifically advise to stay away from that kind of "let's talk about the music" question because too often it tends to result in a "well, we just played the song" non-answer)

b) it doesn't name the publication, for all you know it's more of a general-purpose outlet that isn't going to be interested in how many seconds an A sharp was held

this is definitely a binary with no middle ground

and the interview is definitely 0% about the music, with no middle ground

that was not my post or my claim

then I'm not sure why you're jumping down my throat over that

Thank you for sitting down with Food & Wine today. Let's start with the new album.

katherine - was not my intent to jump down your throat or seem aggressive, apologies

overall, i think the way music production has changed has changed the average musician's relationship to the nuts and bolts of making records. sure, in the 80s or something it was possible to just waltz in, cut a vocal and waltz out then let the pros take over, but i think almost any musician these days is doing some degree of self-production on their laptop, or making songs by sending mp3s to other members of the band or at the very least demos that would have been considered elaborate decades ago

i think this is especially true for newer artists who grew up with garageband, fruityloops, ableton etc etc

so i think "we just played it" happens less and less now, as fewer musicians work in traditional studio settings, going in for a month with a pro producer and leaving with a finished product

seems to me that they'd be happy to answer questions about that, or at least some of them

st. vincent in particular has been very thoughtful when talking about the nuts and bolts of her music, like in her guitar moves interview

but they do! "I love the sitar on this album especially on ‘Down’, the riff is so sick. How did you get to the sitar?", "I do hear a bit of (Candy Darling's) voice on the title track, I was wondering if you were kind of modeling your voice after her?", "Do you see this album as a movement, does it have a narrative?", "That’s just how I listened to this album, as a series of short stories. I was wondering how they interlink in your mind?", etc...

(also, I would bet money the '70s question was meant to segue into '70s influences on the album, of which there are many, given that it came toward the beginning, and then when st. vincent one-word-answered it the interviewer kind of had to rapidly regroup)

but the sitar question belied a lack of research and she didn’t even follow up when she was corrected about it being a specific type of guitar

anyway it’s off the internet now, so whatever

they must have got to her.

check the obits