For nearly two decades, St. Vincent – aka Oklahoman art-popper Annie Clark – has enjoyed a gift for shapeshifting that might remind you of another musical innovator. First she was the “asexual Pollyanna”, as she’s dubbed her first incarnation, before she mined ‘90s alt-rock for 2011’s ‘Strange Mercy’ and later entered what she’s called her “latex era”. The cosplay led to mild controversy when she adopted the look of Andy Warhol’s transgender muse Candy Darling for her last project, the ‘70s rock-inspired ‘Daddy’s Home’.
And now? “In general on this record,” Clark told NME earlier this year, “there’s no character – it’s just me. It’s just the sound of the inside of my head.” Her seventh solo album is bracingly dark and aggressive, its uncompromising nature linked to the fact that it’s her first self-produced record (though she has always co-produced her work). Opener ‘Hell Is Near’ indicates St. Vincent’s taste for misdirection, since its ethereal and wistful tone gives way to a volley tracks that trade in pulverising beats, corrosive blasts of noise-rock guitar and lyrics that drip with disdain. “I look at you and all I see is meat,” she sneers on the swaggering ‘Flea’.
For all her protestations that she’s eschewed characters, the song sees her inhabit its titular creature, who represents death, which is writ large across ‘All Born Screaming’. Dave Grohl drums on that tune, as well as on the explosive lead single ‘Broken Man’, but it’s clear that this is pure, unfiltered Annie Clark. The album’s front section is thrashing and lacerating – a dispatch from the abyss – as she revels in morbid imagery that speaks to a period in which she was besieged by loss (true to mercurial form, she’s declined to be drawn on specifics). And then something strange happens. With the melted Bond theme ‘Violent Times’, she ushers the listener through a secret door that leads to a mellower vibe.
On ‘The Power’s Out’, backed by a laconic bassline and aching slide guitar, she shrugs: “No-one can save us.” It’s the sound of acceptance that there are few happy endings, which is reflected on the sprawling title track. Here St. Vincent and fellow pop outsider Cate Le Bon dance through the album’s central conceit that we go out as we come in – kicking and screaming – so you might as well embrace the chaos. In ditching the artifice, Annie Clark has made her most generous and open statement yet.
Details
- Release date: April 26, 2024
- Record label: Virgin Music/Fiction Records