A still from the official video of St. Vincent’s ‘Los Ageless’; Photo: YouTube
Singer-songwriter St. Vincent (a.k.a. Anne Erin Clark) is releasing her fifth album Masseduction on October 13. In a recent conversation with Pitchfork, she broke down every song on the record.
This release is not as dark as her 2014 eponymous album — instead, the drive of this new album is sensuality, with the title track representing the epitome of that. “The thesis for the album very well could be a lyric from this song: ‘I can’t turn off what turns me on’,” she said.
When she first started working on this track, she wasn’t sure about it, she said. But after sending it to her producer, Jack Antonoff (aka Bleachers), she ran with it.
“It was the last track to come together,” said Clark. “The words to all the verses and everything just came out in a torrent, and I sent them to Jack. I was like, ‘Is this too oblique?’ Jack, who is the ultimate cheerleader, just said, ‘No, this is really interesting. Keep going.'”
The funkiness of the song and the way she sings it is reminiscent of Prince, as Pitchfork pointed out. In fact, she said he came to one of her shows that she played a few years ago. She said it had an affect on her thought process during the concert.
“Thank god I was doing choreography in the show, because otherwise every thought would have been: What does Prince think of this?” she said.
Apparently, Prince thought very highly of her performance. “My friend told me that he said he was going to steal one of my dance moves,” Clark said.
Meanwhile, she told BuzzFeed News the songs on this record are more personal than she’s ever been before. “In so many ways, I thought I was being completely transparent and brave in every record, only to realize that they are very oblique,” she said “Who knew! I had no idea.”
“I told you everything,” she continued. “I told you more than I would tell my own mother. It’s right there.”
Listened to all three singles released so far, “Los Ageless,” “Pills” and “New York,” below.