St. Vincent - The Self and Annie: Behind the Masks of a Pop Alien

Who is St. Vincent, really? Part rocker, part jazz chanteuse from some nocturnal cabaret, part postmodern witch, part latex-clad popstar; always glamorous and mysterious, in every appearance. What lies behind the many incarnations and the elusive identity of the singer-songwriter who, more than any other, has managed to tear down the last remaining barriers between avant-pop and the mainstream, soaring on her mezzo-soprano voice and virtuoso guitar playing over acrobatic — and often equally indecipherable — compositions? For some, she represents a new kind of sophisticated avant-garde entertainer, in the lineage of the ever-enduring Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush and Bjork; for others — the less charitable ones — she's a bold revivalist, ready to go as far as cosplaying in the name of a shameless, smoke-and-mirrors retromania.

Although she's crossed the threshold of 40, Anne Clark still prefers to leave wide margins of ambiguity around her career, one that has established her as one of the defining female figures of the 2000s. With that irrepressibly irreverent, Peter Pan-like playful spirit of hers, paired with the mischief of a seasoned glamour chanteuse, in a fertile hybrid that never fails to throw everyone off balance, detractors included. Still, she can take satisfaction in the countless accolades she's received from critics as well as illustrious music stars: from David Byrne, with whom she even had the honor of collaborating on a joint album, to Taylor Swift, who unexpectedly enlisted her to co-write the hit "Cruel Summer".

Rather than dispelling the mystery that still surrounds St. Vincent, then, we'll try to reconstruct her many faces, leaving you to work out the solution to a musical enigma that the primal scream of her latest album has helped partly unveil, showing at the very least that beneath the costumes and the artifice beats a heart unafraid to reveal itself in all its complicated humanity.

Last trip to Tulsa

Anne Erin Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 28, 1982. She starts playing guitar at just 12 years old, the instrument sold to her by a certain Tony Hyatt, whom she will later call a "guitar hero" for it. During her teenage years, she works as tour manager for her aunt and uncle's band, Tuck & Patti. She grows up in Dallas, Texas, where she attends Lake Highlands High School, graduating in 2001. She then enrolls at Berklee College of Music, but drops out after just three years. On this, Anne later states: "I think that in a music school, just like in an art school, or any kind of school really, there has to be some system for grading or passing judgment. The things they can teach you there are quantifiable. I think that's all well and good and it has its reasons, but at a certain point you have to learn everything you can, and then forget it if you really want to start making music."

While still attending Berklee, in 2003, she released an EP for her classmates titled "Ratsliveonnoevilstar," a palindrome. She then returned home to Texas, where she laid the groundwork for her future career as a musician.

She first joined the Polyphonic Spree, then, in 2004, came under the wing of an avant-garde guru like Glenn Branca, taking part in the American composer's "100 Guitar Orchestra" performance, held in honor of Queen. After her stint with the Polyphonic Spree ended, in 2006 she came under the protective wing of Sufjan Stevens, with whom she began performing live.

But Anne had made up her mind: she wanted to make it on her own. Her first move was choosing a stage name: St. Vincent, inspired by Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center, where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953. "It's a place where poetry comes to die," Annie would later explain, also recounting that she took the name St. Vincent from a line in the song "There She Goes My Beautiful World" by Nick Cave (from the album "Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus"), which references the Welsh poet.

It was Beggars Banquet that signed her, allowing her to record her debut album, Marry Me (2007), whose title comes from a line in the TV show "Arrested Development." Joining her were three high-profile guests: David Bowie's keyboardist Mike Garson, drummer Brian Teasley (Man or Astro-man?) and multi-instrumentalist Louis Schawadron. But the undisputed star of the show is Anne Clark herself, who immediately puts her knowledge to good use, enriching everything with compositional flair of a superior order and crafting a record that's fresh, original and surprising.

Many of the compositions stem from a love of jazz and from a concept of open orchestration that guides all the countless sonic ideas, which surprise and enchant with every listen. An extraordinary geometry animates "Your Lips Are Red," where free jazz meets electronics and tribal music, where the piano wrestles with the rhythms all the way to a melodic apotheosis led by violin and Annie's minimal vocals — but really, every track manages to surprise in some way.

Even the opening "Now, Now" shows off original tones: almost a childlike raga, with incisive acoustic guitars and children's choirs, that explodes into an abrupt ending that seems to come out of nowhere and carry the song elsewhere. The title track "Marry Me" is a more reassuring Feist-style ballad, which, between orchestral loops and handclaps, hypnotizes the listener with mischief and innocence.

The endless melodic constructions, at times atonal, are evident and countless on the dazed "Jesus Saves, I Spend," which layers jazz and blues elements, as well as strange vocals, onto a madrigal structure, with an enchanting sonic perfection.

Tracks that seem simpler at first glance are nonetheless marked by brilliant ideas, like the closing "What Me Worry," a very refined jazz ballad with pleasant flute and sax counterpoints, or the nocturnal "Paris Is Burning," a film somewhere between "Cabaret" and Fellini, with Shakespeare references. The purest romanticism dwells within the record's oblique textures — just listen to the languid "All My Stars Aligned," with liquid piano and angelic choirs, perfect for the Beatles' "White Album".

Avant-garde references abound on the beautiful "The Apocalypse Song," with a splendid string section, polyphonic rhythmic breaks and noise sounds. Bossa nova and orchestra meet on the ironic "Human Racing," rich in acoustic nuances with a none-too-reassuring ending, with Annie's gorgeous voice soaring after having delved into American folk tradition on the intriguing, sensual "Landmines." Even the album's sole instrumental, "We Put A Pearl In The Ground," proves excellent, confirming a virtually flawless record, on which Garson's presence adds further depth to textures that are already complex and captivating.

Many reviews will point to Bjork as a possible reference point, but anyone who doesn't stop at the immediate effect will discover in Annie creative and musical abilities more akin to Kate Bush, from whom she seems to have inherited a taste for the unexpected, as well as the effervescent ability to assemble dissonant elements into something unique and captivating.

Annie goes to Hollywood

The success of her debut pushes Annie Clark out on tour. Two years of shows that put her through the wringer. So she spends day after day on her couch watching movies, especially Disney cartoons, searching for inspiration on how the songs for the new album should sound. And she laughs off the fear of the difficult second album with a no-net leap into the sky of film-score soundscapes and symphonic constructs applied to her slightly Lilliputian baroque pop.

In Actor (2009) there's a bit of all this: ambitions worthy of a psychedelic musical, Elfman-esque/Disney-esque atmospheres, lavish brass and string arrangements paying homage to Stravinsky, solid electronic foundations, and a narrative thread in the lyrics that seems to point to a kind of symbolic, impressionistic concept about the frustrations of the American woman, something uncertain between Sylvia Plath and the "Desperate Housewife". And the ambitions find immediate confirmation on the songwriting level: everything is not only airy, majestic, luminous, but also nimble, disarming, catchy, evidence of a fragile balance, a symptom of a state of grace that renews its hypnotic power every time you're about to snap out of it.

"The Strangers" opens on enchanted choirs and continues with an orchestral and synthetic weave propped up by a kick-drum pulse, over which the ethereal, reverb-drenched voice soars until the distorted bridge that lands in the finale. "Save Me From What I Want" casts its spell at a marching pace, driven by convex, voluminous bass, somewhere between girl-group responses and psychedelic guitar inlays. "The Neighbors" is the perfect Broadway-ish air descending over a downtempo groove, amid indie-rock jolts, choral backing and an enveloping moog harmony. "Actor Out Of Work" is the first single: a miniature of baroque synth-pop. "Black Rainbow" is a joyous folly built entirely on an off-beat synth rhythm, with gorgeous interplay between horns and strings, right up to the concluding symphonic ascent where the drums come crashing in on the kick and the guitar lines turn almost glam.

But the true masterpiece is "Marrow": the usual choral/orchestral overture and then... a series of electro-funk broadsides with syncopated breaks, strings and choirs again, almost gothic this time, in the background, Edward Scissorhands acting in the same film alongside Bjork and Madonna. "The Bed" renews the Elfman-esque lineage with its oriental arpeggio, its operatic callbacks to the Land of the Rising Sun and the Morricone-like quotations of the finale. The piano/bass-pattern-and-metronomic-drums cantata "The Party" produces a chillingly howled chorus, later taken up in unison in the brass-band close, while the dreamlike, psychedelic dance of "Just The Same But Brand New" worthily seals an album deserving of applause, before the folk-rooted neoclassicism of "The Sequel" brings down the curtain.

Actor crowns the Tulsa singer-songwriter with critical and commercial success of considerable scale (as testified by its ninetieth spot on Billboard), given its indie pedigree and the extreme refinement of her musical proposition.

After confirming all the potential and the enormous expressive range of her debut Marry Me with the follow-up Actor, St. Vincent completes an ideal trilogy with Strange Mercy (2011), a work that bears heavily the imprint of its predecessor, but pushes even further the contrast between the baroque, Broadway-ish pop architecture and the arty, post-punk undercurrent, both in the writing and in the arrangements. Backed by musicians of great stature such as Bobby Sparks (moog, clavinet, wurlitzer), Midlake drummer Mackenzie Smith, violinist Daniel Hart, and keyboardist Brian LeBarton (already a veteran of Beck's court), Clark places the emphasis on production values (more elaborate, synthetic, layered sounds, the voice often rarefied and screened), once again entrusted to John Congleton, and on the prominence of guitars, in a riot of effects and distortions that never feels gratuitous, as well as on electronic counterpoints (grooves, beats, drum machines).

The originality of the songs and the quality of the melodic ideas, moreover, once again seem perfectly capable of carrying the weight of this ambitious structural work. As the opener "Chloe In The Afternoon" makes clear right away, at times almost Bjork-like in the way it plays on the dissonance between the high-pitched vocals, the jagged guitars, the synth patterns and the irregular beats. "Cruel" also leans hard into electronic grooves, with an almost disco-wave turn over which Clark carves out a fluty, solemn chorus, as does "Historical Strength" with its pulsating synthetic baroque quality. Conversely, experimental use of guitars dominates "Northern Lights" (raw and flecked with rust before the final crescendo) and the gorgeous "Surgeon", with the melismas of its airy, melodic first part gradually growing more feverish until it catches fire in a dazed, hallucinatory, almost krautrock-like coda.

And while "Cheerleader" alternates the impalpable bitterness of the verse with the scything staccatos of the chorus, "Neutered Fruit" stretches out into a lounge/downtempo-ish mood, enlivened by vocal phantasmagorias and choral streaks. On the more classicizing side, standout tracks include the crepuscular, whispered title track (aside from the acrobatics of the chorus), with its liquid, nocturnal guitar and punctuating drum machine; the elegiac romanticism of "Champagne Year", crossed by curtains of moog and rivulets of electronic bleeps; "Dilettante", which begins like an Andrew Lloyd Webber aria before being estranged and unsettled by the minimal rhythm and saturated guitars; and the oriental theatricality and orchestral evanescence of "Year Of The Tiger".

With Strange Mercy, St. Vincent confirms the depth of her musical research and a steady maturation on the compositional front, even though, within an overall picture of great acclaim, as time (and repeated listens) go by, a touch of nostalgia emerges for the oblique, slightly naive freshness of her early work. In any case, this third album also becomes the American singer-songwriter's biggest success, propelling her to 19th place on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States.

Love for the Giant

Riding this renewed success, Annie Clark embarks on a collaboration with Andrew Bird on his solo album "Break It Yourself", singing on "Lusitania". But the real coup comes a few months later, when none other than David Byrne invites her to make an entire album together. The former Talking Heads frontman is no old Methuselah, lost in the clumsy reproduction of a glorious past. An empathetic artist, a neurotic genius, a curious man, a white-haired and sprightly sixty-something, rather than recycling and restoring the splendors of new wave – specifically that seductive white funk of years gone by – he studies, looks around, rides his bike, seeks out new companions and experiments with different combinations. Fascinated by world music, dispensing good advice from his intriguing radio channel, whose playlists easily turn into an international carousel zigzagging between Caetano Veloso, Bjork and L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, he has no qualms about collaborating with new and not-so-new rising stars. So, after Fatboy Slim, he spots the ideal partner in none other than Annie Clark, the beautiful, cultured and enterprising pop starlet he met three years earlier in New York, at a charity concert. The young woman – already noticed, unbeknownst to her, at some of his shows – is swept up by Byrne's magnetism, polished and knowledgeable, easygoing and driven just enough to serve as a counterweight and breathe new life into the new experiment.

On June 14, 2012, "Who" is released, the first single previewing the long-distance collaboration, which, from its opening horns, announces the playfully funky spirit of the whole project. A chance encounter on a road in the New York suburbs – just as in the amusing promotional video, complete with Byrne-esque, hilarious dance moves – the song is, lyrically, a meditation on the possible empathy of a chance meeting, rewinding the tape back to "Little Creatures" from more than twenty-five years earlier.

Love This Giant (2012) is released on the following September 11th. "The threat of natural disaster promises an emotional epiphany; urban apocalypse gives way to a garden party", read the press notes, confirming Byrne's consistency with himself, as metropolitan neurosis, viewed from a creative standpoint, has always been one of the most compelling threads running through much of his output.

Saxophone, trombone and French horn carry on the discourse of the single in "Dinner For Two". The taste for experimenting with every kind of sonic substance doesn't leave out gospel either, as in the intro of "I'm An Ape", while, elsewhere, there's no holding back from a moderately syncopated pop-wave feel, as in "Lazarus", another two-voice episode, among the album's most successful.

True to himself, David Byrne hasn't forgotten that he's a devoted lover of world music, to the point of having founded Luaka Bop, a delightful label specializing in all things Latin; the tribute is paid in the hyper-luminous, lush "The One Who Broke Your Heart", which, in a provocative game – backed by guest appearances from Antibalas and The Dap Kings, straight from the Daptone stable – could pass for a bonus track on a remastered edition of "Rei Momo". The closing note is an adorable, romantically futurist happy ending, a ballad for David alone, who doesn't hesitate to proudly display the marks of a splendid maturity, far removed from his old nihilism and his dizzying love of cynicism ("Outside Of Space & Time").

Annie Clark, who co-writes the lyrics and plays various instruments, carves out her rightful space, emerging from the comparison with the master more than respectably. The references, once again, are varied and not slavishly followed, but simply personalized; among them, a lighter Bjork ("Weekend In Dust") and, in the use of voice during the first forty seconds of "Ice Age", the pale, elegant incarnation of Laurie Anderson. A delightful and intriguing vestal virgin, then, at the court of a magnificent giant to be loved.

The knockout blow

Annie Clark's almost immaculate journey so far, however, risked becoming an elusive mirage in the desert, ready to dissolve at the first misstep. With detractors poised to point to a first (partial) stumble in her third solo album, slowing what had seemed an unstoppable rise, and that love for the giant having turned into more of a fascinated reverence than genuine creative synergy. And after the fleeting shadows that followed the crackling funk dance alongside such an illustrious talking head, it was time to talk about Russian drugs and assorted garbage over aggressive guitar outbursts, as if all the urgency painstakingly repressed within the more sophisticated atmospheres of Strange Mercy wanted to burst out all at once, with no time to stop and think about the whys and hows. But with Annie Clark, nothing can ever really be taken for granted, and her feline leap arrives when you least expect it.

So on November 18, 2013, the enigmatic St. Vincent announced a European tour for 2014, while the following day Republic Records triumphantly revealed it had signed her. And it is precisely with this American label, owned by Universal Music Group, that she released what can, for many reasons, be considered St. Vincent's masterpiece — or at least the album of her definitive consecration. It's almost prophetic that, at the threshold of the most decisive chapter of her career, alongside a striking change in look — a perfect postmodern witch with cotton-candy hair — the choice of title would fall on her own nom-de-plume, with nothing added: St. Vincent (2014). As if to underline that yes, up until now she had been playing somewhat, enjoying herself slipping into other roles, but that the true soul of Annie Clark is right here, spread across the full length of eleven songs ready to be played again and again.

Balance: everything revolves around this word in the latest effort from the former member of Polyphonic Spree. A balance only partially achieved in her previous works, where the tendency to overdo things, to pour out all her extraordinary talent without much counterweight, often ended up undermining tracklists of considerable value. Here, instead, everything contributes to the realization of a fully unified project; the abundance of voices in the mix doesn't compromise in the slightest the density, or above all the intensity, of the whole. And it's almost surprising that the binding element, beyond the particularities of each individual track, is precisely the rhythm section — that percussive apparatus which two years earlier had somewhat undermined the charisma of Clark's performances.

With the return to action of those sharp guitars, deep as basslines, which had been the true making of Actor, having absorbed the funk lesson of Love This Giant and adapted it to her own needs proves a genuine triumph for these songs — the risk worth taking to allow them a further leap in quality. But risks are something she has always knowingly taken: still, seeing her so at ease amid drum machines and assorted effects, between the soft-R&B cadences of the enchanting "Prince Johnny" (a song of great delicacy, carried by an ethereal keyboard bed with an almost choral sweep) and the brass-driven triumph of "Digital Witness", a witty critique of social networks and everything orbiting around them ("Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping, if I can't show it you can't see me, what's the point of doing anything?"), still makes quite an impression — all the more so since, for once, their use isn't aimed at bold games of contrast (we all remember the bipolar jolts of "Marrow") but at underlining the songs' powerful pop drive.

Annie's world has always orbited around the constructs of popular songwriting, to a greater or lesser degree depending on inspiration and mood. On this latest turn of the wheel, though, something didn't quite click, and the satellite's course was set on an irreversible collision, straight toward the center of gravity of this vividly colorful galaxy. All the better, one might say: with the bright, fresh production of John Congleton (who had already worked with her on "Strange Mercy"), and with the support of two exceptional drummers such as Homer Steinweiss (who plays for Her Majesty Sharon Jones) and McKenzie Smith of Midlake, the songwriting of the Tulsa-born artist finds an exemplary immediacy and verve, sustained throughout with an imagination worthy of her Disney-born idols.

The standout moments, the key passages, the killer hooks are everywhere: from the skipping synths of "Rattlesnake" (the chasing refrain is excellent, perfectly matched to the adrenaline-charged mood of the lyrics, with Annie fleeing a venomous snake), to the refined soul-woman aplomb of the closing "Severed Crossed Fingers" (almost a way of urging herself onward despite the hardships of a musician's life), there isn't a track here that doesn't offer something memorable, not a single compositional aspect that feels uninteresting. Here she is yielding to the seduction of a string pad worthy of Sinéad O'Connor to build the heartfelt ballad "I Prefer Your Love", an intimate melody dedicated to her mother and rightly among her most poignant songs ever. Then there she is, with a savoir faire straight out of the Prince school, picking up the guitar and punctuating the angry vocal ups and downs of "Birth In Reverse" with sharp jabs, before everything dissolves into an unhinged, accelerating instrumental coda recalling the glories of "Surgeon".

There's also room for eccentric short-circuits that bear witness to a past still kicking (the electro-blues of "Bring Me Your Loves", which shares with PJ Harvey only an echo in its title), and even unexpected masterstrokes drawing on progressive rock ("Huey Newton" and its dynamic funk crescendo halfway through): all of it delivered with an admirable lightness of touch, resolving the structural complexity of these little vignettes with the melodic cleanliness of a true virtuoso.

On her fourth solo album, Annie Clark finally earns her rightful place among the greats, figuratively throwing down the gauntlet to anyone willing to take up the challenge.

Mass seduction in three acts

Three years then pass, marked by a pause in album releases. Annie Clark, meanwhile, treats fans to a handful of cult performances — like on the night of April 10, 2014, when Nirvana were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she took the stage for a rendition of "Lithium" — and embarks on a short U.S. tour with The Black Keys. She also contributes to several tracks on the Swans album "To Be Kind" (2014) and appears alongside the Chemical Brothers on "Born In The Echoes" (2015), confirming her omnivorous musical appetite. In 2015, she also wins a Grammy Award for her self-titled album in the "Best Alternative Music Album" category. On top of that, throw in a horror short film, the tabloids' flirtation with the much-discussed rumors about her relationships with Cara Delevingne and Kristen Stewart, and the resulting access to an audience and potential that, back at the start of her career, seemed totally out of reach.

What remains, though, is the underlying enigma: who is the elusive protagonist of these oblique perspectives, of approaches so far from orthodox in both storytelling and composition? The doubt remains unresolved, and never has the game felt so brazen and evident as on Masseduction (2017), her fifth solo album. Recorded mainly at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, with guests such as Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Greg Leisz, Mike Elizondo and Tuck & Patti, St. Vincent's new record wrong-foots listeners once again. Hopping nimbly between the absurd and the concrete (a bit like the controversial backside immortalized on the cover), between grounding in reality and flights of imagination, Clark conceives a cycle of narratives in which the personal element — this time more intense and pressing than ever (she herself speaks of a first-person album) — transfigures and scatters in a sea of different directions (it's no coincidence that, for the first time, it isn't her face adorning the album cover), while still staying true to the irony and flair that have characterized her releases up to this point. Anyone quick to see in this new project a kind of unresisting conversion to contemporary mainstream mechanisms, however, will have to think again.

Indeed, the album's thirteen tracks waste no time showing their desire to sound more powerful and vibrant than ever, to aim for recognition on a much wider scale. Undoubtedly, the promotional effort poured into the record, the recruitment to the cause of Fun.'s Jack Antonoff, among the most in-demand producers of the moment (Lorde, Taylor Swift), and the meticulously crafted, elaborately constructed videos all point to the symptoms of an artistic profile that can now draw on far greater resources and leverage that weight to launch a broader-reaching form of communication. And yet there's no sign of compromise, of selling out to the highest bidder: at the center of the conversation remains her, Annie Clark, with her voice ready to submerge you in a sea of irony, her lyrics straddling the morbid and the lofty, that grainy, noisy guitar that has sparked so much debate among six-string obsessives the world over, her nursery-rhyme melodies with their elusive structures. What varies, as usual, is rather the sonic outfit, the set of arrangements used to adjust the trajectory.

Increasingly in touch with funk, though filtered through the synthetic key so dear to Prince in the '90s (reflected in the neon aesthetics and saturated hues of the artwork), with flashes of top-tier glam, the new album finds St. Vincent in a more electronic guise than ever before, updating an aesthetic now fully defined in every aspect through pulsing beats and all manner of electro patterns, bringing to the surface dance dynamics that had already been present in past efforts.

"Sugarboy", with its rhythmic construction brimming with dynamism and that synthetic chase so reminiscent of the Donna Summer produced by Moroder, stands in this sense as the paradigm of Clark's new direction. While there's no shortage of more relaxed, melodic moments, reflected in the remarkable ballads that adorn the record (the melodrama of "Happy Birthday, Johnny", among the most heartrending episodes in her catalogue, the sudden shifts in tone running through "Smoking Section", a sort of tribute to the piano heroines of the Nineties), it's from the breakneck grit of this track that the full clarity of the musician's energy and taste for maximalism comes into focus - sparing no effort in choral call-and-response, a chilly interpretive sensuality, and moments where she molds her guitar to almost simulate a brass orchestra.

While it's true that at times the sonic sheen ends up doing the heavy lifting for songs that aren't always extraordinary from a songwriting standpoint ("Pills" in particular, a self-mocking snapshot of dependency on psychiatric medication, insists too much on a rather trite, childish formula despite the unexpected opening on the ending and the coherent electro-glam frame), it nonetheless heightens the power of the many standout episodes, especially that expressive ambivalence which fuses sensuality and detachment, pain and effervescence, into one exciting whole.

The lead singles, then, turned out not to be misleading at all. On one hand, "Los Ageless" speaks of alienation and the desire to escape the devouring mechanisms of the megalopolis through a compositional device honed down to the millisecond, in which electronics blend perfectly with guitars that are at once sexy and close to the noisiest moments of her career; on the other, "New York" opts for a softer touch, a kind of ballad-form update of her early fairy-tale style, letting the contrasts play out in the lyrics, where regret and abandonment loom large (a possible reference to her ex, Delevingne?).

In this back-and-forth between glamour and sadness, between brazenness and a yearning for subversion (the title track, a seductive and thoroughly modern essay in glam-funk, spells it out without mincing words), St. Vincent has, in short, identified - with some help from the twists of her own life - what may well be the new direction to give her career, and how best to approach it from every angle, keeping intact an artistic center of gravity and a quality standard that currently have very few equals. Rarely has telling one's own story proven so compelling.

The release of Masseduction is followed by another disorienting move from the American artist. Remember "1989" by Taylor Swift, entirely reworked acoustically by that jokester Ryan Adams? Well, with MassEducation we're faced with a similar operation, with the key difference that Anne Clark did it all herself, revisiting her previous album a year on with the awareness of a seasoned singer-songwriter, suddenly struck by a fit of subtle authorial intimacy. Anyone who hadn't warmed to the excessive gloss of an album awash in bold, synthetic, over-the-top glam(our) tones can now take comfort in the same thirteen songs, completely transformed in a brand-new guise. For the occasion, Clark disguises herself as Carole King, enlisting trusted singer, pianist and producer Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, who has worked with Sufjan Stevens, Glen Hansard, Nico Muhly, The National, Sam Amidon, Rhye, The Gloaming, and Martha Wainwright, just to name a few.

A perfect fit, this pairing of St. Vincent and Bartlett; piano and voice constantly walk the same tightrope, swinging between lows and highs, sudden shifts worthy of a Broadway musical, and understated pauses, revealing a depth that was genuinely hard to detect in the original record, quite apart from the lyrics, as provocative and never trite as ever. From the very first notes, Anne Clark proves herself a vocalist in the mold of the Nineties, equipped with a voice that's both steady and sinuous, fully aware of her own range.

The full vocal talent of the Tulsa-born musician comes into the open here, and it's truly a wonderful thing to hear. At times the songs are barely recognizable, revealing a taste for radical transformation reminiscent of Chan Marshall in her (glorious) "The Covers Record" days. Take "Young Lover", for example, a song that benefits anew from being stripped of its original pulse and its initial explosion in wave-flavored dress. A reworking that brings a hidden light to the fore, a melodic intensity straight out of another era. The same goes for "Fear The Future" and "Los Ageless", which sound as if lifted from a Rickie Lee Jones record. Less striking, by contrast, is the rereading of "Happy Birthday, Johnny", a ballad already extremely tender and bare-boned in its original version. Meanwhile the closing "Hang On Me", duly stripped of its synthetic clothing, gains further depth, serving as a perfect example of what's been noted above.

St. Vincent once again demonstrates her immense talent, channeling it through the folds of a vibrant introspection. MassEducation flips the perspective, as is made clear right from the cover photo, emblematic of Clark's desire to tell her story and reveal herself without the trappings and tricks of the trade, finally laying bare her artistic depth in all its grace.

Speaking of Taylor Swift: in August 2019 the American superstar releases one of her most successful albums, "Lover", which contains "Cruel Summer", among her most acclaimed songs. Well, St. Vincent is a co-writer of "Cruel Summer", which only becomes a genuine hit a few years later, when it's chosen as the signature song of the massive Eras Tour and, released as a single in 2023, not only tops the charts across half the world but also becomes Swift's single most-streamed song ever, wresting the title away from "Blank Space". A pretty good investment...

But the saga of Masseduction doesn't end there. Because Nina Kraviz also gets involved: the fascinating and celebrated Russian DJ, record producer and singer asks a roster of world-famous DJs and producers to stitch together a new wardrobe for the tracks of St. Vincent's album, which has meanwhile picked up two Grammy Awards. This definitively closes the loop on these songs, which we can now say we've heard in every possible transmutation: from the bare, minimal versions for voice and piano alone collected on the narcotic MassEducation, close to how they were originally conceived by the songwriter, to the arrangements on the official album, right up to these new propulsive versions that give each of them further opportunities, steering them down paths that St. Vincent, while writing them, could only have dimly imagined.

Some producers give the tracks a purely instrumental treatment (a choice made, for instance, by Batu on the opening "Hang On Me"), others play with sampling just a few phrases (Bjarki on "Pills"), still others work with slowdowns and restarts (Hieroglyphic Being on "Sugarboy"). Elsewhere things stay closer to song format (EOD on "Los Ageless" and "Slow Disco", Fred P on "Happy Birthday, Johnny"), keeping a more radio-friendly runtime while still departing sharply from the originals. Quite often the focus is on a taste for repetition (Roman Zuckerman does excellent work on "Young Lover", as does Kraviz on "Slow Disco").

Some manipulations prove particularly aggressive (Buttechno on "Savior" and PTU on "Fear The Future"), others more atmospheric (the "Sugarboy" reworked by Emika, "Dancing With A Ghost" courtesy of Pearson Sound), and in some cases one is even reminded of early-Nineties vogueing (Midland's excellent take on the title track, the third version of "New York" signed by Nina Kraviz). Worth noting is the presence of Laurel Halo (her contribution to "Young Lover" is praiseworthy) and a closing spot given to the eminently danceable "Fast Slow Disco" (in the vein of Robyn's hits), a track not included on the original tracklist but released afterward only as a single.

The sequencing follows that of the original album; the most reworked tracks turn out to be "Pills" and "New York", with three remixes each, while the busiest producers are Nina Kraviz herself (featured on four occasions), EOD and PTU (two apiece). If some passages seem dispensable (the two versions of "Smoking Section", by Jlin and Mala, in particular feel negligible), Kraviz deserves credit for managing to line up as many as 22 different takes on Masseduction, even though it's clear that anyone would have found it hard to turn down such a major, high-profile project.

Daddy's home

Daddy is home. He's served almost ten years in prison, paid his debt, and now he's ready to come back and embrace the world again. And bring with him a rich substratum of memories to surrender to, the way children cling to their mother's dressing gown. Daddy's Home (2021), St. Vincent's new album released after a near four-year break, lives entirely within recollection. It's a chance for Annie Clark to talk about herself without tipping into sentimentality, while at the same time paying tribute to her father's figure by fully immersing herself in Seventies New York (the one he loved and lived through), in the Cassavetes-style decay of a city that no longer exists. It's a dive into a narrated past, one she slips into with a sense of mimesis now second nature to the seasoned songwriter, who pulls off yet another reinvention by settling into a context more soulful and at peace than ever before, almost as if the guitar geometries of her previous albums belonged to an entirely different musician. Now the time has come to turn the clock back fifty years.

Blonde wig, a look that could have stepped straight out of a "Chungking Express" scene, a dissolute attitude: the presentation couldn't be more faithful, but it's that very context that flatters its image further: there's nothing remotely contemporary to be found in the album's grooves, and the electric funk that had permeated her latest work bends to the needs of warm, dense arrangements, fully respectful of the time capsule they're set within. Even the guitars, usually far buzzier and more thunderous, here discover an unprecedented softness and relaxation, able to travel in step with the sitar (a genuine co-protagonist of the record), with keyboards as expansive as mellotron, even a lavish choral setup. Certainly, between the jagged edges of Masseduction and the far more thunderous cut of the self-titled album, it would have been impossible to find such reflectiveness, such an abandonment of any real rhythmic ambition in favor of shifting the focus onto a softness, a refinement of touch that Jack Antonoff's production knows exactly how to nurture.

In this respect, Clark's vocal performances are among the most intense of the past decade, heightened by a warmth that fully mirrors the personal content of the lyrics. When her father is mentioned in passing, it becomes an occasion to reveal an unprecedented vulnerability. We move from the psych-soul effusions of "The Melting Of The Sun," a round of tributes to great figures of film and music in whom she finds a mirror and an ally (from Marilyn Monroe to Tori Amos), to the sly sensuality of the single "Pay Your Way In Pain," which stings even the smallest joy with pain. And while "Down" addresses relational violence with a toughness that crosses Sly Stone with Prince, "Down And Out Downtown" delivers the most moving and passionate moment, with a "flowery" attitude that carries the 1970s etched in its heart. It's a shame that such moments, breathtaking when taken in isolation, end up getting lost in an album that doesn't make melody its center of gravity and that "wastes" the potential of such well-crafted characterization by bogging itself down in songs that are, frankly, too sedate.

A tune with country-soul undertones like "The Laughing Man" dissolves its ambitious lyrical abandon into a drowsy flow that communicates very little of the lyrics' sense of surrender (a problem that also afflicts the otherwise elegant Minnie Riperton-style attitude of "Somebody Like Me"). And the tribute to Candy Darling, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed's muse, as well as a thematic backbone of the album, is far too brief: in representing a pivotal moment of the era's queer scene, her figure deserved more than a minute and a half.

Venial sins? Perhaps, because Annie Clark reinvents herself with the ease of a chameleon and knows how to tackle every turn with all the credibility it requires. But when the ease of the pen is missing, the change arrives with a touch too much friction.

(Re)born Screaming

Another three-year pause follows. In the meantime, St. Vincent performs a cover of "Glory Box" by Portishead alongside The Roots on the Tonight Show, delivers another cover, of David Bowie's "Young Americans," for the charity Love Rocks NYC, and sings "Running Up That Hill" to induct Kate Bush into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Her hotly anticipated new studio album, All Born Screaming (2024), is released on Virgin and is described by Annie as "hard, dark, urgent, psychotic," because "there are certain places inside us that we can only reach by walking through the woods alone, to find out what our heart has to say. It sounds real because it is real." After all, there always comes a moment for every shapeshifter when it's necessary to put away costumes and masks and present themselves naked before the audience, the essence behind the artifice. It doesn't go quite that far, but after a decade spent elaborating ever more elaborate concepts, Annie Clark casts off every disguise and returns to being herself. Back to the creative scream, to the primal force of an oblique yet irresistible songwriting style, the same one that in Marry Me first hinted at the full character of one of the leading voices in the last twenty years of American indie.

Taking charge of the production of one of her own records for the first time, on All Born Screaming the Tulsa artist unravels the tight aesthetic ties of her recent work and rediscovers the searing power of freedom, letting emotion, the force of her own experiences, take precedence over everything else. It's a long-awaited breath of fresh air, even if drawn with no small amount of pain. Amid the deepest black, St. Vincent burns, consumed by flames devouring her arms: there could be no more fitting image, no more vivid representation of a work that is undeniably freewheeling, yet marked by a deathly aura, by a sense of looming threat ready to descend on every single track. It's no coincidence, then, that "Hell Is Near" serves as the invitation, the mandatory passage into the new universe signed Annie Clark. With a melodic cut that seems to set off in the wake of Enya, the musician wastes no time scattering its seraphic drift into a bath of regret and bitterness, loss taking shape in a vase of marigolds. Structured in phases, dominated first by bass and a Byrds-like twelve-string, then by synths and piano, the track pushes Clark's pen toward a direction of desolate surrender, a tragic sincerity that the following "Reckless" delivers in double dose. Initially conceived as a funeral march, a moving requiem steeped in memories, the song detonates into a furious synthetic coda, a sludgy fury that denotes utter disorientation.

Such dynamism, whether within a single song or across the record, hovers over the entire listening experience; on an album that finally puts Clark's guitar expertise to use as it hasn't been since Strange Mercy, the effect is that of a rollercoaster through murky depths, softened though by a compassion that feels genuinely reassuring. Sensual at the start, unruly in its evolution, "Broken Man" draws on Dave Grohl's drumming skills (he also appears on the following "Flea," where love is seen as an inevitable infection) and unleashes an adrenaline-fueled, industrial-tinged burst, a personal tribute to 90s rock, vulnerable enough to crack the tough shell of the arrangement. The funky stride of "Big Time Nothing," built on a foundation that closely echoes Björk's "Army Of Me," blends her experience with David Byrne into a schizoid, engaging prism (did someone say Foetus?), capable of spitting out all the tragic alienation of the contemporary individual. That it's so hypnotic in rattling off prohibitions as though they were the ten commandments only counts in its favor.

And it's certainly not over yet. "Violent Times" exploits the famous Bond-esque motif of "Goldfinger," channeling it into a tight mechanical groove; meanwhile Clark indulges in vocal mannerisms, uncovering her inner Shirley Bassey while riding the wave of a drama that seems to build and build. It's merely the appetizer for a B-side that reflects on real deaths (the ill-fated tribute to SOPHIE on "Sweetest Fruit," already a source of controversy and accusations from the producer's most devoted fans) and possible apocalypses (the terror-stricken subway of "The Power's Out") without any emotional restraint, teetering on the edge of an abyss impossible to escape.

Looking past the inexplicable reggae interlude of "So Many Planets," the collection's only truly jarring note, it makes perfect sense that the closing duties fall to the title track. Joined by Cate Le Bon, who here also takes on bass duties, it reaffirms the two-part structure of the opening hell and closes the circle with a relentless choral refrain that abruptly cuts off the jovial wave atmosphere of the opening.

As if the scream were both a sentence and a comfort, St. Vincent seals her latest project without offering any real resolutions, yet proves that beneath the costumes beats a heart unafraid to present itself in all its complicated humanity. That's enough.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro ("Marry Me"), Mimma Schirosi ("Love This Giant"), Giuliano Delli Paoli ("MassEducation") and Claudio Lancia ("Nina Kraviz Presents MASSEDUCTION Rewired")

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