WVAU’s #6 Album of 2014: St. Vincent – St. Vincent
December 26, 2014
Courtesy of I Love St. Vincent.
The last time we saw St. Vincent’s Annie Clark on her own, she was behind a sheet of white latex screaming on 2011’s Out of Reach–referencing Strange Mercy. Now, having taken the chicken bone our of her mouth, St. Vincent has returned with 2014’s self-titled affair.
We tend to view a self-titled record as reflective, contemplative, and encompassing; quite the shock when we witnessed Clark on the cover with platinum-violet hair, a focused gaze very much opposite the wide-eyed expression of her first two records, and sitting atop a Memphis Group-style throne. Even with this visual reinvention, attempting to recategorize St. Vincent would prove fruitless; “I think you might be reading too much into the grey hair,” she’d state in an interview with Salon. To put St. Vincent into her own terminology; it’s the same but brand new.
Many of the aforementioned characteristics of a self-titled record are present in St. Vincent, just in a bit-crushed interstellar form. Musings on sexual identity (“Prince JohnnyÛ), death (“Birth in ReverseÛ), motherly love (“I Prefer Your LoveÛ), and identity in the digital age (“Digital WitnessÛ) all find their place seamlessly against the robotic disco doom funk of St. Vincent’s 40 minutes.
Not only is Annie Clark’s latest record challenging, inventive, and absorbing, but it recalls what made her past work fantastic as well. This sense of forwardness and familiarity present in St. Vincent makes it a true benchmark record of 2014 from an artist with no parallel today.