St. Vincent – The Strangers

On her 2007 debut album, Marry Me, St. Vincent, also known as Annie Clark, finally took centre stage, having previously been a member of the Polyphonic Spree and toured with Sufjan Stevens as part of his band.

Marry Me was a record that saw her flex her musical muscles, veering towards prog one minute, then dipping her toes into jazz the next. Throughout, however, Clark’s personality shone through; her lyrics were consistently funny, biting and honest, grounding her tendency to change time signature or style abruptly with a sense of humanity.

Two years on, her next record, entitled Actor and due in May, arrived with a certain amount of expectancy. The first taster, ‘The Strangers’, currently available for free on her website, hints at further experimentation, though it still maintains plenty of charm. “Paint the black hole blacker”, Clark sings ominously, over tinkling guitars, choral voices and rising woodwind that serve as a pretty backdrop. Things don’t stay pretty for long though, as Clark’s guitar erupts suddenly, effectively splitting the song in two; it’s like a Disney film suddenly being invaded by Quentin Tarantino. Clark’s barbed comments do little to chase away the uneasy atmosphere, as she paints images and snapshots of a relationship gone awry ‐ someone gets a black eye, a wedding turns into an argument.

In interviews, Clark has talked (less than seriously at times) about the influence of films and their soundtracks on her writing, and the tweeting birds and flutes on ‘The Strangers’ point to her using the conventions and clichés of film for her own means, with a dash of gallows humour and a nod to the Hollywood ideal thrown in for good measure. The humour and bathos of her lyrics will be familiar to fans of her debut, though here they’re used in a slightly more abstract way. As a result, ‘The Strangers’ takes a little while to fully reveal itself. However, as a brief pointer towards what can be expected from Actor, it certainly suggests that listeners, new and old, are in for a treat.