'St. Vincent'

If you’ve seen St. Vincent  (singer Annie Clark to those who know her offstage) you know she looks like she’s perpetually on her third cup of coffee.

Her hair has always been a messy, but once it was dark brown and tame. Now, it’s bright white, and her roots are coming in. It juts off in every direction like it’s trying to escape from Clark’s scalp.

Her sunken eyes, once constantly reverent, are now more likely to be wide open and piercing. Her skinny frame once donned small, floral dresses. Now it’s seen more often in black, flowing robes.

Clark is clearly strung out in 2014. She might be escaping from something. She’s looking to free herself, but it’s not going as planned, and she’s getting frustrated.

The opener on her eponymous album, a track called “Rattlesnake,” is about a time she walked along a remote, deserted ranch road in West Texas and decided to take off all her clothes. But she saw a rattlesnake on the side of the road and ran all the way back home, terrified.

The phasers on the drums and blippy synths on that song make it sound like a spaceship is taking off. We’re clearly on our way to an otherworldly journey.

Clark is one of today’s most talented and innovative guitarists. But on many of the songs, her guitar arrives late, leaving room for synths, drums and vocals on the front half. As the songs unravel and grow deeper, Clark’s fuzzy, unruly guitar creeps in.
“Birth In Reverse” has a relatively tame post-punk buildup. But near the end, a scuzzy guitar riff pops in, fighting with the equally dirty synth line. The two brief phrases shout at each other, throwing punches as each measure of music passes.

Clark has consciously or unconsciously created mini-rock operas in each song about dissatisfaction, obsession and anxiety, and they’re dripping with inner turmoil.

Don’t be fooled by the cryptic lyrics and smooth keyboard lines in the first half of “Huey Newton,” either. Halfway through, a monstrous guitar line comes in. It sounds like it escaped from a Black Sabbath song and attached itself to the song’s brain stem.

But that’s not the most disorienting song on the album. “Bring Me Your Loves” is out of control. Its goofy, hokey, dixieland drums somehow accompany a synth line that’s so distorted it sounds wrong.

“Bring me your loves / All your loves, your loves” Clark snarls. And then it’s somehow a beautifully honest song about a difficult relationship. The outrageous instrumentals cut out and a capella, she wails “I thought you were like a dog / But you made a pet of me.”

But Clark knows if all the songs were like these, her album would be impossible to digest. So she balances the bombast with beauty.

“Prince Johnny” and “I Prefer Your Love” feature the same tender pop St. Vincent perfected on 2011’s “Strange Mercy.” And closer “Severed Crossed Fingers” is Clark’s 2014 update of classic rock power ballads, complete with choir-like backup vocals, acoustic guitar strumming and keyboard arpeggios.

It’s not as good as “Strange Mercy.” That album was a near-perfect collection of songs that caught Clark at a point where she was mastering her sound.

But somehow “St. Vincent” seems more honest and right. It’s aptly titled. It’s a more accurate version of Annie Clark than anything she’s made before.

Clark shows us that her chaos on this album is controlled. She hasn’t completely unraveled yet, and she probably won’t. Her statement on this album seems to be that
it’s okay to come undone once in a while if you can savor the moments when you’re back down to earth.

So when you’re making your coffee in the morning, take it in. Smell the aroma. Watch the milk dive to the bottom of the cup and blossom back up at the top. Take a look out your kitchen window at the crisp morning as the steam rises from your mug.
But then go ahead and drink one cup too many and come undone.