Rating: St. Vincent once again makes a well constructed pop album, lyrically and stylistically diverse the album is fun to listen to throughout but really lacks any staying power. It's certainly a good album, but it wasn't as revelatory as the early reviews would lead one to believe.
I sometimes imagine what 16 year old me would think of the music I listen to these days. Being somewhat more obnoxious then than I am now because all I listened to was black metal, I probably would have scoffed at my heroes. I'm sure David Byrne and Morrisey would get a hearty amount of loathing for being too corporate or hipstery or pleasant sounding. I've thankfully grown from those days, but every once in awhile my knee-jerk black metal upbringing kicks in and I really want to hate an album for purely image purposes. I never listened to Strange Mercy and the amount of hype this album has received as of late is just driving me insane, so I came into this album with a bit of bias.
The album certainly won me over to St. Vincent by the end, she's certainly a good musician. All of these songs have great layered instrumentation, and she's obviously a great vocalist. The whole album feels very fun and ethereal since it features so many distorted synth beats, I almost get an chiptune vibe off songs like Rattelsnake or Regret. The final track is a particular standout as an amazing electro-pop song. All the tracks are good, some of them are memorable, everyone expects that from St. Vincent, so what's wrong with the album?
The tracks sound sort of samey, and none of them are really big or interesting enough to really wow me. However, there are loads of albums that have impressed me with lyrics instead of spectacle. Unfortunately I find the lyrics on this album to be fairly grating. Lines like: "Remember that time we both snorted the piece of the Berlin Wall that you extorted," or, "Feelings, flashcards, fake knife, real ketchup" pull me directly out of the song for sounding so fucking ridiculous. Or on songs like "I Prefer Your Love" where the main chorus "I prefer your love to Jesus" is delivered in such a flat way that I can't tell if she's making a profound statement or an ironic one. It's not much of a compliment to tell someone you love them more than Christ if it sounds like you think Christ is a dick anyway.
If you already like St. Vincent then you will most likely enjoy this album. I enjoyed it as someone who is new to her music and I will certainly check out her back catalog. This particular album however, was not memorable enough to cement her in my mind as the new queen of indie rock.
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