Highlights: Prince Johnny, Huey Newton, Digital
Witness
7/10
God. People just love her, don’t they. But before I get
to the merits of St. Vincent’s latest, please take a listen to this. Now listen
to this album. Now tell me what you think.
Twisted pop music. If it’s not genuine, it might sound like you’re trying too hard. You pull your
socks up, way up, and they snap. It’s not pretty. “Rattlesnake”, the opening
song here, clanks and clatters and then suddenly it’s over. Excuse me? Where’s
the punchline? Instead, she should have opened the album with the funky post-punk
of “Birth In Reverse”. More than anything on St. Vincent, the song proves that the collaboration with David
Byrne left a lasting impression on her. Also, “Oh what an ordinary day; take
out the garbage, masturbate” is a huge opening line. “Prince Johnny” is the
sort of stuff Lana Del Rey would record – if Lana Del Rey was about substance
rather than style. “Huey Newton” starts as a haunting ballad with a lovely
watery keyboard line and then becomes all noisy and tastefully abrasive.
Unfortunately, Annie Clark isn’t a great songwriter. St. Vincent is a good album, but the
lady just doesn’t have that many remarkable songwriting chops. It’s clever,
inventive, but you feel the effort. She tries so goddamn hard to make it clever
and inventive, and as a listener I feel compromised. After the soulful
and surprisingly straightforward “I Prefer Your Love” (‘…to Jesus’), the thing
becomes very messy. Good choruses are mixed with go-nowhere verses and desperate
attempts at being idiosyncratic. Having said that, “Severed Crossed Fingers” is
a great closer.
An impressive, self-consciously smart record, but Christ
what a suffocating listen. She won’t give you a chance to breathe, and she won’t
give you a single sensation you won’t get from a far superior Kate Bush album.
Still, a seven. Some things are for admiration rather than love.
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