This year really has been an embarrassment of riches, music wise – after a slow start, the new releases starting popping out in Spring, and since then we really have been spoiled for choice. I could have easily chosen to review the Billie Eilish album, or the Waxatachee, or the Yaya Bey, and that’s just off the top off my head.
But there are two albums that, so far, have stood head and shoulders above the rest for me. The first of those is Vampire Weekend’s, which must be one of the finest collections of songs they’ve ever released. The second of those two albums is the latest album from St Vincent aka Annie Clark, her seventh.
I do so with quite a bit of trepidation – because as regular listeners/readers will know, I chose St Vincent’s divisive last album, Daddy’s Home, for a previous blog, and it’s fair to say that it went down like a bucket of warm sick. So I nearly didn’t. But then I thought what the blog and the pod is about, and that’s to communicate our love for music – and well, I REALLY love this music.
Though I really enjoyed Daddy’s Home sleazy 70s shtick, I can see why it didn’t land with some people. Annie Clark is unashamedly an art rock musician – she enjoys shapeshifting between albums and using different personas and is pretty open about her debt to David Bowie on that front. I’m a huge, huge fan of hers (as is my partner Caroline, who adores her), but I’m also pretty comfortable in that art rock zone – I like my music with a bit of style, edge and persona. I also get that, for some people, that can be a huge turnoff – that ‘persona’ thing can feel like an affectation, and barrier in the way of the artists and the listener.
So why have I chosen All Born Screaming after the mauling Daddy’s Home got? Well, perhaps I am a sucker for punishment. But I think this album is really, really special. The first thing to note is that Clark has completely dispensed with the persona – this is just her. She’s said in a number of interviews that she was finding it tiring reinventing herself and that she also wanted to try and channel a bit more honesty about what she’s feeling. That’s also reflected in the sound of the album – she’s a huge Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails fan and you can really hear it in songs like Reckless:
The other thing I love about this record is that, despite its incredible musical breadth – grunge rock, electro pop, ballideering and even reggae (!), it flows SO well as a unified piece of work. If you want to talk about the Art of the Album, then surely this would merit a piece? What a journey this record goes on. Opening with the ethereal Hell is Near, and then segueing into the dark, foreboding and brilliant Reckless, and then – boom! – you get right between the eyes with the single Broken Man, surely one of the strongest out and out rock songs she’s ever made.
What I think is brave is that it doesn’t try and disperse the different styles across the record – more that you head from territory to territory, starting slowly then hitting the hard rocking trio of Broken Man, Flea and Big Time Nothing (another absolutely belter!). Violent Times moves the album into a whole new section with the Bowie-esque Violent Times followed but the gorgeous art-rock ballad The Power’s Out. Both explore Clark’s long held fascination with the ‘end of the world’ vibes in her lyrics.
And then the album does another extraordinary left turn. Sweetest Fruit is almost a straightforward pop banger (with a slight kink in it), but you can almost imagine it as a stadium ballad. If that doesn’t push the envelope enough, So Many Planets is a – I can’t believe I’m writing this – pop reggae track that is – I also can’t believe I’m writing this – an absolute triumph (others views are available of course, but I LOVE it!).
Things round up after only 41 brisk minutes and 10 songs with the funky and surprisingly chirpy All Born Screaming, that despite the dark lyrically content somehow feels like an upbeat climax to the album. And in that 41 minutes, Annie Clark has exhibited the full range of her incredible songwriting (and guitar playing, obvs) in a record that, for me, hangs together better than anything she’s ever done. I think it’s her finest hour. And that, brothers, is why I had to pick it for this month.
So, he says nervously….over to you…?
thisisnothappening.net 