Samiul Bashar Samin
A smile is more than baring teeth”, sings St Vincent on ‘Every Tear Disappears’. But you can spin that sentiment backwards, too: the baring of teeth doesn’t necessarily imply a smile, and in St Vincent’s case, it could mean something altogether more menacing.
‘St Vincent’ is her fourth solo album, coming on the heels of a celebrated collaboration with David Byrne last year. It’s the sound of an artist no longer battling to prove herself; where once she used her idiosyncrasies like weapons, here she lays them bare. When Clark sings “I love you more than Jesus” on ‘I Prefer Your Love’, it’s all sweetness.
A cynic might say that ‘St Vincent’ has a more accessible sound because it’s Clark’s first record since she signed to a major label – Universal imprint Republic.
But there’s also a new confidence here, the product of four albums of hard work and a tour with an artist who’s made a career out of being an autocrat and outsider (she affectionately described her relationship with Byrne to one interviewer as “a couple of freaks”). Clark has frequently written about trying to please: that she’ll “make a living telling people what they want to hear” on ‘Champagne Year’, or that she spent the summer “on my back” on ‘Surgeon’. This album is about solo pursuits: putting the trash out and masturbating on ‘Birth In Reverse’, taking all her clothes off during a walk in the Texan brush on ‘Rattlesnake’ or tripping out on sedatives in hotel rooms during a “lonely, lonely winter” on ‘Huey Newton’.
The Zapping synths on ‘Psychopath’ and ‘Huey Newton’ add a dreamy, space-age touch, transporting her from the suburbs of ‘Strange Mercy’ into the present, where machines are the windows to our reality, and nothing happens unless it is posted online (‘Digital Witness’). The virtuosity and intellectualism of ‘Strange Mercy’ are tempered with tunes written for dancing; for feeling. “It’s not the potion, it’s the magic that I seek”, she sings on ‘Every Tear Disappears’. On ‘St Vincent’, that magic is within reach.