Brad Beatson has Michigan State to win it all.
If you like thoughtfully structured songs that dive into neck-snapping guitar solos, you should listen to this album. It’s St. Vincent’s St. Vincent, her fourth studio project and strongest to date. It’s my favorite album of early 2014 and it will certainly appear on many year-end lists.
Above is an illustration of the opening track, “Rattlesnake,” where she begins by stripping down in the desert and runs into the titular monster. After the jump are four more. Scan ’em quickly and go play the album outside.
Prince Johnny, you’re kind but do be careful
by now I know just when to stand clear.
When all your friends and acolytes are holding court
in bathroom stalls
Where you pray to all to make you a real boy
St. Vincent noted [in a video that’s since been removed] that this song is about a self-destructive friend. She believes you can’t cast judgement on said friend, because you realize you’re no better. With the emergence of Tinder, I decided it was appropriate to update Pinocchio’s image. Above is hipster Pinocchio leaving a girl’s apartment whom he’ll never see again.
Fake knife real ketchup
Cardboard cutthroats
Cowboys of information
Pleasure dot loathing dot Huey dot Newton
Live children blind psychics
Turned online assassins
So Hale-Bopp, Hail Mary, hail Hagia Sophia
Oh it was a lonely, lonely winter
This song is based on an Ambien trip gone awesome for St. Vincent, that she mentioned in this NPR interview. She met Huey Newton during the trip and they really bonded. The illusions are strung together by her stream-of-conscious delivery and they build up to the record’s most wicked guitar solo.
What’s the point of even sleeping?
If I can’t show it if you can’t see me?
What’s the point of doing anything?
What’s the point of even sleeping?
So I stopped sleeping, yeah I stopped sleeping
Won’t somebody sell me back to me?
“Digital Witness” is the lead single from the record and you can watch its video below. This song makes me want to chop my computer in half with an axe and disconnect from social media. Screens rule everything around me and I’m starting to get sick of it.
I thought you were like a dog
But you made a pet of me
On “Bring Me Your Loves” St. Vincent seems to be talking about power struggle in a tumultuous relationship. That feeling you get when you think you’re in control, except they think they are, too. And soon it just flips you upside down and you’re whole worlds tangled up like the leash that guides you. Also, she put out a record with David Byrne, so I drew him too.
St. Vincent is currently on tour. If the video below looks fun to you, you should go.
