“Give it all away, you give it all away / Cause the whole world’s watching you,” begins Annie Clark, also famously known as St. Vincent, on her latest album, All Born Screaming. From the tracks that I heard her release in anticipation of the album release—compelling, but decidedly industrial—I was not too excited for this album, to be honest, as industrial is not my favorite genre of music. But I had heard people say that it was a “return to form” for St. Vincent, as well as a characteristic artistic rebirth, and so I gave it a chance.
I will say it is one of the more moving records that I have heard in a long time, and it has plenty of industrial touches, but plenty of the art rock Annie that won me over to her music. Written in the wake of a lot of literal death and loss in her life, it is as heavy a record as you can get, especially considering St. Vincent’s pop grandeur. And that pop grandeur is on full display on this record as well. It is an impeccable balance of vulnerable and bombastic, poppy and alternative, celebratory and totally dejected.
All produced by Annie Clark, herself, who tracked vocal tracks sometimes up to 100 times to get the just right vocal take, it is a labor of love and a meditation on death, that I’m willing to bet will be looked back upon many years from now. Her vocals, which are the center piece of the record, sometimes recall PJ Harvey, sometimes Beth Gibbons of Portishead, but always Annie Clark’s unique sultry vocals, which are hallowed in the halls of female vocalists now, as much as the former singers.
“Hey what are you looking at?… / Like you’ve never seen a broken man,” she sings in her gender bending hit single, “Broken Man”. The totality of the album is trying to deal with the brokenness that comes from death, violence, hell, whatever in life causes us to suffer. At the center of the album is the image of two lovers in embrace (which DNA tests determined to be both men) turned to ashen stone by the eruptions of Pompeii. “Lovers discovered in an embrace / for all eternity.” A similar image is the trans artist SOPHIE who died falling off a balcony, trying to get a better look at the moon. Both images she said she thought were so unbearably beautiful and romantic.
That is the saving grace of such a dark album, the indescribable love and beauty that we experience between being born (“screaming”) and dying (“breathless”). Annie said in an interview with BBC Radio that she doesn’t understand how a song as gut wrenchingly beautiful as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (that took literally years to create) gets covered in karaoke bars and on American Idol, as sort of a novelty or sentimental thing. She responds to that feeling of sentimentalism, by creating an album that digs deep into what she feels like is the essence of love in the midst of life’s pains.
I have not experienced much death in my life, (though I’ve certainly wanted to die myself,) and when I have, I have had the buffer of belief that my loved ones are now in a better place. But I do believe that death is real, and that our consciousness of life’s tragedies is an important part of living a compassionate, empathetic, and meaningful life, in the form of creativity and love given. I’ve experienced my fair share of anxiety in this life, however, and find it a balm when an artist like Annie sings, “Watching the sink filling red / And I’m not stopping it.”
Half way through the album, it felt like it was almost over. By the end of the album, it felt like I had been with Annie for an eternity. The songs, which display some of the genius of famous artists like Trent Reznor, David Byrne, and Lady Gaga, are all expertly written and produced. Where an album like Masseduction has some of my favorite songs of the 21st century on it, it is this album as a whole, a sort of concept album, that I think tops even that wonderful album. Well, maybe not: Masseduction was pretty great, too. But, at any rate, Annie Clark does it again.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3nRlJXz5W39luXRto5hc4f?si=O2RxeTA7QgWgC0REENCnFw
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