Before we move onto other parts of the world with musical discovery, I have to talk about St. Vincent. A relatively well known indie pop/rock artist, St. Vincent is one of my favorite current American artists. St. Vincent is the stage name of the singer songwriter Annie Clark. To date she has released three incredibly colorful and wonderfully different albums.
Her first album Marry Me is definitely the most accessible of the three albums that she's released. With a strong pop sound coupled with a myriad of wildly different instrumentations, she forges a fun and enjoyable debut album. Starting with 'Now, Now', her album throws interesting chords directly at the listener. Paired with her voice, it's an experience that's just plain different from any current pop artist out there. Getting to track 4 is the titular track Marry Me. While not the most memorable track on the album, it makes awesome use of panning and is a completely solid song in its own right. Chugging along is 'Paris Is Burning', which is perhaps the most popular and memorable track on the album. To be fair, that exact song is how I got hooked into St. Vincent's sound back in 2008 and ever since I just always come back to the song. With an awesome cello line and a surprisingly refreshing meter change from 4/4 to 3/4, it's just an awesome song that I could listen to for hours. After that, the remaining songs kinda pale in comparison to me, but are each incredibly well thought out and good songs.
Moving along, St. Vincent's second album is Actor. To be honest, I don't nearly enjoy this album as much as Marry Me nor her next album, Strange Mercy. The sound is very different, with a really strong emphasis on synths and really thick chordal textures. However, that isn't to say that the music is bad at all. On the contrary, it's incredibly interesting, it just requires more warming up to in my opinion and experience. In addition, the lyrics are quite a bit darker and that makes it a bit harder to listen to if you care about lyrics. To get a good idea of the type of music I'm talking about, listen to 'The Neighbors' and 'Actor Out of Work'. To fall even further down the rabbit hole, listen to 'Marrow' and 'Laughing with a Mouth of Blood'. Overall, I think to most listeners, Actor is a really strange album and as such won't be as enjoyable. However if you can get past that pop/country/rock/rap/whatever bullshit bias you have, the album is full of really interesting sounds that really do deserve your attention as much as whatever else you listen to.
St. Vincent's most recent solo album, Strange Mercy, came out in September 2011 and it's an interesting blob of music. Being kind of a mix between Actor and Marry Me, it has a set of really catchy songs that are sprinkled with a lot of the complex textures present in Actor. I find that Strange Mercy is almost a testament to her voice and the pliability of it. In my opinion the catchiest song on the album, 'Cruel' shows just what St. Vincent's voice can really do. With a soaring main theme, she seems to reach notes that just shouldn't be able to be sustained the way she does. And with gasping breaths, you can tell the kind of pressure and stress it really puts on her. But that kind of dedication leaves you humming the tune for hours to come. Even if you come off Actor hating it, please try Strange Mercy because it just shows another change and another facet to the mind of Annie Clark. Me personally, I'm greatly looking forward to her next solo album, she did release a joint album with David Byrne in 2012, and I hope after this you are too. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the post and you came away with the knowledge of an amazing artist.
--CsMiREK
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