St. Vincent seems programmed to appeal to me. She’s fond of snaky guitar lines and bouts of atonality. She played in a noise rock band called the Skull Fuckers. And she took her nom de plume from a Nick Cave lyric and named her debut after an Arrested Development joke. That debut was called Marry Me. Seeing her on the cover – big eyes, frizzy brown hair, and what would become her trademark ambiguous expression – you want to take her up on it. 

 

And then there are the live covers. Here’s her covering Big Black’s “Kerosene” (https://youtu.be/fVhCo7PoVpA?si=-Qmeh1YQBmVli11f) Here’s her doing Nirvana’s “Lithium” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. https://youtu.be/LM9sq5GENbE?si=6Uc6iZRNEZ4lL-Ld Here’s her doing The Pop Group’s “She is Beyond Good and Evil” on The Tonight Show, instead of ANY of the songs from the album she’s ostensibly promoting. https://youtu.be/KKrpiej9HKI?si=2f1OaE8QzAWtnsXm 

 

Big Black, Nirvana, The Pop Group! You know that meme, “If you’re gonna Nextflix and chill and he’s wearing basketball shorts, he’s already halfway inside you”? So, that, but the basketball shorts is St. Vincent’s covering The Pop Group, one of the most ironically named bands of all time. 

 

But then there are her albums.

 

St. Vincent was born Annie Clark. That’s an objectively better rock and roll name than St. Vincent, but St. Vincent is probably the more appropriate name for the music that Clark creates. If you’ve fallen in love with the gnarly noise rock of Clark’s covers, you may be a little disappointed by the natty, layered art rock of her records. For as gripping as she is on stage, on vinyl, she can come off as fussy or clinical. For someone who Rolling Stone is now calling the 26th greatest guitarist of all time, someone who has their own (very cool looking) $3,200 Music Man signature guitar, she really withholds the fretboard fireworks. She can no doubt play, regularlly busting out tricky art-funk riffs which she then SINGS over, but, on record, she seems more interested in putting together unusual song arrangements than letting it rip. This kind’ve…bums me out. 

 

For as much as I would love St. Vincent to be a guitar-mangling punk rock pixie, that’s not what she wants to be. She has a much wider sonic interests, from Robert Fripp’s guitar squiggles to Disney princess vocals and harmonies. St. Vincent’s ears cast a huge net, and by trying to fit her into my favorite box, I’m not giving the breadth of her talent its due. 

 

Besides, Clark is much more interested in the “art” part of art rock than the “rock” part. But, boy, is she good at the art stuff. Like David Bowie, whose “It’s No Game” she once said she listens to every day, St. Vincent reinvents her look and sonic palette for each album. For Daddy’s Home, she embraced the look and feel of early ‘70s soft rock. For Masseduction, she tried out electropop and made herself into a fembot. Other albums she has described as about “housewives on pills” or a “near-future cult leader.” This is an artist who thinks in concepts as well as melodies. 

 

On this week’s album, her self-titled fourth – you know your career is getting serious when you drop a self-titled album four in – St. Vincent bounces between glitchy industrial pop (“Rattlesnake”), Berlin Bowie-esque art rock (“Birth in Reverse”), aching balladery (“Prince Johnny”), West Coast hip-hop (dig that synth on “Huey Newton”), electro funk (“Digital Witness”), and squirrelly Do Diddley (“Bring Me Your Loves”). 

It’s also pretty hot. St. Vincent sings about waking up and masturbating, tracing a lover’s undies with her finger (Lyric Genius says it’s “Andes”, but I heard what I heard), and preferring human love over that of Jesus Christ – although that song actually might be about a mother’s love. You know what? When your most high profile lyric is the word “masturbate,” it might color the tone of the rest of the album for me. 

 

St. Vincent is a mysterious, futuristic, robotic, and romantic record. It’s as stylistically diverse as an album can be while still feeling like a singular piece of art. This is expert-level creation. It’s also a fitting entry point into St. Vincent’s tidy catalog, and probably a more accurate representation of what she does than her cover of “She is Beyond Good and Evil.” FYI, St. Vincent’s concept the  “near-future cult leader” record. 

 

That said, there is a part of me that hopes that St. Vincent’s next album concept will be “gnarly biker bitch” or “noise rock dominatrix.” I would love to hear her put together a crackjack live rock band and rip through a greatest hits set with the edge she brings to “Kerosene.” (Her best songs are unimpeachable.) At the very least, I’ll hold out hope that her next album sounds like it was composed on instruments instead of a laptop.