St. Vincent’s hasty, flamboyant return

🕒 This article is more than 5 years old (Published Oct 22, 2017).

When Annie Clark, more commonly known as the genre-bending St. Vincent, won the 2015 Grammy for Best Alternative Album, there was no doubt that the recognition was fully deserved. The eponymous fourth album peaked on many critics’ lists of top albums, with most of them claiming that Clark has truly found the inherent sound of St. Vincent, a statement that was also confirmed and disseminated by Clark herself.

The acclaim was far from hyped and pretentious—St. Vincent was, hands down, one of the most eccentric and enrapturing rock records to have come out in the last decade, reminiscent of the groundbreaking theatricality imposed by the likes of Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury. The overflowing praise was further validated when Clark embarked on her Digital Witness tour (read more here), which lay the foundations for St. Vincent to become an unprecedented art-rock priestess of high-end caliber.

So, when her fifth record Masseduction was announced to the public through a set of satirical press releases, there was much skeptical speculation as to what the record would sound like, especially after she dropped the first two—rather pop-heavy—singles, “New York” and “Los Ageless.” To some extent, the uncertainty seems to have been warranted.

The new album finds Clark in a state of heartbreak and disclosed healing, which was likely spurred by her widely publicized relationship and break-up with Cara Delevingne, who also lent back-up vocals on this record.

The glaring and scrutinizing reality of the celebrity bubble, which undoubtedly left a vivid mark on Clark’s personal life during these past few years, is reflected in both the sound and imagery (who would have known that St. Vincent would ever go for so much red and pink?), giving a du jour note of accessibility to her music that did not exist before. This oddly glossy side of Clark works wonderfully on some of the album’s tracks when the irreverent imagery and vulnerable songwriting are effortlessly unified, but, as a whole, Masseduction falls short of its intended perfection.

Particularly, the album’s culprits are its inconsistency and length. All of Clark’s previous records had a notable sound and character to them, or as she called it in an interview with Spin magazine, an “archetype.” Whether it was “housewives on pills” for Strange Mercy or “near-future cult leader” for St. Vincent, each album carried a specific sound that perfectly complemented her fictional alter-egos. For Masseduction, she cloaked herself with a “dominatrix at the mental institution” model, but the album’s tracks only occasionally follow this bizarre twist on mainstream appeal.

“Hang on Me,” “Masseduction,” “Happy Birthday, Johnny,” and “Young Lover,” for example, are all fantastic tracks but carry such different styles of sound, ranging from inexplicably ecstatic anthems to overly drawn-out ballads, that it seems as if not enough attention went into the polishing phase of production. Whether this shift to sonic inconsistency is a result from working with Jack Antonoff (who has helped produce Lorde and Taylor Swift’s albums) instead of her usual patron, John Congleton, is unclear, but there is a tangible asymmetry in the album’s sonic landscape that cannot go unnoticed.

As a direct consequence of its inconsistency, the album’s length can also wear out the listener faster than it should. “Fear the Future” for example, sounds like a B-side of St. Vincent, while the final three tracks—”Dancing with a Ghost,” “Slow Disco,” and “Smoking Section”—sound like they should have been included on a standalone EP. Their sullen and hazy sound, albeit appealing and enjoyable, does not serve as a proper closure to the album after the ecstatic, and almost aggressive, aura of the first few songs. Had she cut the record at only nine songs, leaving “Young Lover” as the album’s apocalyptic ending, Masseduction would have been a flawless work of art.

This all may sound too negative, but Masseduction is still a good record. When Clark delivers on this album, she delivers some of the best material in her opus. “Savior” is possibly the most refreshing track, bridging together the remnant indie sound of Strange Mercy with the musical theatricality introduced on St. Vincent into a seductively despondent song that (even if ever so briefly) shows the unrealized potential of Masseduction. 

“Savior Boy” and “Los Ageless” deliver the offbeat sexiness that Clark was aiming for through incredibly melodic choruses and outlandish outros that will initially perplex and then continue to entertain any listener. On top of that, they have been cleverly listed on the record right after each other, as the opening riff in “Los Ageless” is subtly introduced during the closing notes of “Sugar Boy.”

It’s just that these disjointed moments of exceptional meticulousness are still not enough to compensate for the album’s apparent hastiness. It wouldn’t be fair to say that she hurried the production of Masseduction, because, after all, it has been almost 4 years since the release of St. Vincent, but the lack of finesse, which was omnipresent on all previous records, signals that some time still needs to pass before Annie Clark skyrockets and positions herself as the global star that she truly deserves to be.

Cover photo courtesy of Nedda Afsari. Follow her on Instagram as well.