Critics of St. Vincent call her pretentious. Fair enough—these are the sorts of songs that dare take themselves seriously and tack on easy suffixes like “in America” when they want to let you know they are Making a Statement. But there’s an under-appreciated playfulness about Clark’s music that balances this out. I can’t think of much contemporary guitar-based music that has this much fun with texture—the rubbery whiplash percussion on “Prince Johnny”, the stretched-taffy vocals on “Bring Me Your Loves”, the gleefully synthetic-on-purpose sheen of “Digital Witness”. At best, St. Vincent has a mischievous curiosity about texture (and explosions) that feels almost childlike. Recently my 8 year-old cousin asked me, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, if I’d ever microwaved a banana. I’m terrified to try, but I’m sure whatever happens—splattering, abrupt, radioactive—sounds exactly like an Annie Clark guitar solo.
“When I first heard and saw Annie, I could see that she could write a memorable and beautiful melody– something a lot of younger artists shy away from, intentionally or not,” the head Talking Head tellsSmithsonian magazine in an article accompanying the accolade. “So I sensed she’d accepted that part of music — a part that is welcoming and inviting to us as audience members. But then she tempers that with fierce guitar playing and often dark and perverse lyrics delivered in an affectless tone. It’s really quite disturbing, but in a good way. I could sense that beyond the above Annie was pushing at her limitations and trying new things — adding new textures, instruments and ideas to her writing.”
