>>48302794
>Not a very good one
St Vincent, the project of New York-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clarke, debuted with(Beggars Banquet, 2007). Her artistic manifestoNow Nowis a complex clockwork of digital and acoustic arrangements, a post-everything (hip-hop, soul, pop, glitch and rock) kind of recombinant compound.Jesus Saves I Spendreplicates the architectural miracle erecting a spiraling merry-go-round around childish vocal harmonies. After undergoing her kind of musical surgery the soul balladMarry Mea` laMacy Graydoes not "look" like a soul ballad at all. The rocking and passionateThe Apocalypse Songsounds likeAlanis Morissettewith a surreal instrumental interlude.
She couples simple, elegant and charming melodies with the most acrobatic mood shifts and sonic contrasts.Your Lips Are Redbegins with little more than pow-wow drumming but, by the end, it has picked up industrial clangor, acoustic fingerpicking, Middle Eastern strings and dissonant piano.Paris Is Burningbegins with flamenco guitar but, by the end, it has mutated into a Weill-ian waltz for Brecht-ian theater. The mellow pop balladAll My Stars AlignedisBurt Bacharachat his most moronic, but then the song suddenly changes tone and rhythm, propelled by martial drums and manic cello. The nocturnal bluesy lounge shuffleLandminesis redeemed by vintage sound effects, exotic guitar and neoclassical harp.
The album ends with the two songs (Brazilian bossanova ofHuman Racing, the orchestral pop elegyWhat Me Worry) that take their genres seriously, and it's a dangerous artistic move, albeit a commercially sensible one.
Nonetheless, the firepower of the arrangements is impressive enough to conceal whatever mainstream motivations the artist might have.