ST VINCENT
I just get curious about other things. There are so many things that I want to try and still so many things that music has to teach me.” Annie Clark is mulling over the notion of recording an album that isn’t a serious stylistic shift from the one that came before. From the jazz-spiked indie-rock of her 2007 debut Marry Me to her self-titled commercial breakthrough in 2014 and her ascent to superstardom on a wave of latex, square-wave fuzz and electronic beats on 2017’s Masseduction, Clark’s muse has proved as restless as it has been captivating.
All of which brings us to her latest, Daddy’s Home. St Vincent’s sixth solo album is another stylistic shift but the real surprise lies in the nature of it. After the hyper-processed guitar sounds and pounding beats of Masseduction, Daddy’s Home shows us a side of Annie Clark that we haven’t seen before. Heavily channelling the vibes of the 1970s pop music that she grew up adoring, the angular riffs and crushing fuzz have been replaced here by delicate clean tones, a languid, almost improvisational flavour, and lashings of sitar and wah. Even by Clark’s standards, it’s a left turn. But it’s one informed by what came before.
“I think it was a response,” she tells us after a quick detour to grab a blanket before settling in for our conversation. “The guitar playing and the style on Masseduction was a lot of right angles and this record has way more wiggly lines.”
Clark’s playing has always possessed an almost mechanically precise quality but from the very first Prince-like chord stab of album opener Pay Your Way In Pain, there’s a sense of freedom and looseness to proceedings that sounds almost improvisational.
“I mean, every melody was an improvisation at some point,” she jokes. “But, yeah, I was
