Annie Clark says {that a} performer’s job is to “shock and console.” For years, she was doing way more of the previous than the latter. Her first 4 information—an impeccable run from 2007’s Marry Me by way of to 2014’s St. Vincent—performed on a typical trope of the horror style, the concept behind each pristine façade lies a world of ugliness, violence, and malcontent. Horror franchises, in fact, are inclined to get stale fairly quick: As soon as you recognize the final mode and motive of a killer, they aren’t all that scary. The aesthetic of Clark’s music has stayed comparatively constant however as she’s added extra components in—synths, latex, wigs, outlandish album ideas that don’t essentially align with the more and more private music contained inside—it’s begun to really feel much less potent.
All Born Screaming, Clark’s self-produced sixth album, goes for a tough reset on the St. Vincent venture, not by going again to the tough, alien textures of, say, 2011’s Unusual Mercy, however by flicking the dial from “shock” to “console.” Musically, it seems like the primary St. Vincent album since Marry Me introduced and not using a unifying aesthetic: at numerous factors, Clark incorporates Bond theme melodrama, Steely Dan-style prog, bouncy artwork pop and lechy industrial rock, making for what’s arguably her loosest document, an exhale after years of becoming her songs into more and more tight restraints.
It’s a freedom that carries by way of to the album’s emotional content material. Clark’s information usually show heat and vulnerability in flashes, however All Born Screaming feels completely romantic and highlights bits of magnificence amid Clark’s common lexicon of chaotic, violent imagery. On the dazed dream-pop ballad “The Energy’s Out,” she sings about New York as a form of hell created by its inhabitants; removed from a horror story or an indictment, it feels like a love music.
St. Vincent has often let her masks of irony fall on previous albums—“Sweet Darling” on Daddy’s House, “Champagne Yr” on Unusual Mercy, “Comfortable Birthday, Johnny” on Masseduction—however this seems like an album stuffed with these songs. Even the tough tracks are born out of empathy; the quivering, unstable “Reckless” is about spiraling out after somebody you like dies; “Flea” is perhaps kinda gross, casting love and need as a type of infestation, however there’s one thing romantic about that concept, too. Over a beat that recollects the overdriven chug of 9 Inch Nails, Clark sings lyrics that stroll a line between devoted and creepy: “Drip you in diamonds/Pour you in cream/You can be mine for eternity.”
