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St. Vincent Performs This Month at the House Of Blues
The album was produced by Clark and Jack Antonoff at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, with additional recording at Rough Consumer Studio in Brooklyn, and Compound Fracture in Los Angeles. It features contributions from Doveman on piano, Kamasi Washington on saxophone, Jenny Lewis on guest vocals, and beat production from Sounwave, as well as pedal steel by Greg Leisz and Rich Hinman, and additional guitar and vocals from her uncle and aunt Tuck & Patti, respectively.
Masseduction has been described as the "culmination of years of writing, with songs crafted from voice memos, text messages, and snippets of melodies that came to Clark while traveling the globe." Clark has stated that the album focuses on themes of power, sex, drugs, sadness, imperiled relationships and death. In a press release, she stated: "every record I make has an archetype. Strange Mercy was Housewives on Pills. St. Vincent was Near-Future Cult Leader. Masseduction is different, it's pretty first person. You can't fact-check it, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record." Musically, the album has been characterized as "futuristic" pop, electropop, glam rock, new wave, ambient rock, and "industrial-tinted techno", while also incorporating psychedelic rock, electronic rock and dream pop. It consists of guitar and piano, synths and strings, and drum beats "that punch with purpose". St. Vincent became one of the unexpected success stories of indie rock with the release of her second album, Actor, in 2009; the literate, emotionally intricate songs and rich, beautifully crafted pop melodies made her an immediate hit with critics, but few expected her music to cross over to mainstream acceptance. However, St. Vincent's beguiling sounds helped Actor rise to number 90 on the Billboard Top 200 album charts, and its follow-up, Strange Mercy, confirmed her newfound stardom by debuting on Billboard at number 19 in the fall of 2011. St. Vincent was born Annie Erin Clark on September 28, 1982 in Tulsa,
Oklahoma and spent most of her childhood in Dallas, Texas. She began playing
guitar at the age of 12, and picked up some valuable lessons on the life
of a touring musician as a teenager when she joined her uncle Tuck Andress
on the road with his popular jazz duo Tuck & Patti. After graduating
from high school in 2001, she studied at the prestigious Berklee School
of Music, and recorded a self-released, three-song EP with fellow students
in 2003, titled Ratsliveonnoevilstar. In 2004, Clark left Berklee and joined
the extra-large Baroque pop group the Polyphonic Spree as a guitarist and
a singer; she toured with the band, and appeared on the sessions for their
2007 album The Fragile Army. In 2004, Clark briefly worked with another
unusually large group, performing with Glenn Branca's 100 Guitar Orchestra
for a recording of one of his avant-garde symphonies. In 2006, she left
the Polyphonic Spree and joined the backing band of like-minded pop composer
Sufjan Stevens. She recorded a three-song EP to sell at her shows with Stevens,
on which she adopted the name St. Vincent (inspired by her grandmother as
well as the New York hospital where poet Dylan Thomas breathed his last.)
In 2007, St. Vincent stepped out on her own and signed a deal with Beggars Banquet, which released her first full-length album, Marry Me. It was well received by critics, and in 2009, she moved to the celebrated British independent label 4AD for her second album. Teaming with producer John Congleton, St. Vincent's sophomore effort, Actor, was a musical and lyrical step forward from her debut, and strong reviews, coupled with St. Vincent's impressive live performances, helped the album rise from the indie ranks to the mainstream charts. In addition to her busy touring schedule, she found time to make guest appearances on albums by the Mountain Goats and the New Pornographers, and in 2011, she appeared at a special concert paying homage to the pioneering indie rock bands chronicled in Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life, where she performed a striking version of Big Black's "Kerosene" that earned praise from group founder Steve Albini. In the spring of 2011, she was reunited in the studio with producer Congleton, and the third St. Vincent album, Strange Mercy, was released in September 2011. The following year, she collaborated with Talking Heads musician David Byrne after the two met at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for AIDS/HIV charity Dark Was the Night's benefit concert in 2009. The initial plan was to play a one-off show together; however, after the pair began to trade ideas, the project snowballed into a full album. They incorporated horns into the sound and traded lyrics via e-mail until Love This Giant was realized and released in 2012. St. Vincent spent much of that year and 2013 touring in support of the project, which was a critical and commercial success. Late in 2013, she began work on her fourth album, once again working with Congleton. St. Vincent, which boasted some of her most accessible songwriting and challenging sounds, appeared in early 2014. In 2015, she appeared on the Chemical Brothers' album Born in the Echoes,
and in 2016, she contributed a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional
Rescue" to the soundtrack of A Bigger Splash, and she directed a segment
of XX, a horror anthology film featuring all-female directors. She became
the first female ambassador for Record Store Day in 2017, and later that
year released her fifth album, Masseduction, which she recorded with co-producer
Jack Antonoff in New York and Los Angeles. The album also included such
collaborators as Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Tuck & Patti, Doveman,
and Cara Delevingne. Serving Houston, Tx and the surrounding areas. Music News covers all kinds of music from Rock to Country and Alternative to R&B.. |
