All Born Screaming
by St Vincent
In the decade since her self-titled fourth album broke her big, St Vincent (Texas-raised Annie Clark) has upheld the mandate of originality and experimentation established by David Bowie, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey and Tori Amos, all useful reference points.
She has a designer’s eye for striking cover art and here, her arms are aflame like “Icarus in ankle socks” said Uncut.
However, on this expansive seventh studio album – with Cate Le Bon, Dave Grohl and Josh Freese of Foo Fighters, and others – she takes flight without such disastrous consequences. She explores ambitious art-rock with Gothic menace and wall-shaking dynamic shifts, as on the thunderous explosion of Reckless, and blast furnace sonic intrusions in the oppressive synth-rock of Broken Man.
No surprise Nine Inch Nails’ bassist/synth programmer Justin Meldal-Johnsen is on hand as an engineer.
Her lyrics drip with disturbing obsession (“Once I’m in you can’t get rid of me … you will be mine for eternity” on Flea) and societal breakdown on the melodically gorgeous The Power’s Out.
Big Time Nothing is funky hard-pop like Chic and Gary Numan raised on Bowie’s Lodger. It has a monotone litany akin to U2′s Numb: “Don’t blink, don’t wait, don’t walk …” There’s cinematic drama on the pivotal Violent Times, which might work for a Bond film directed by David Lynch, and the final third offers more space and resolution in the alt.funk pop of So Many Planets and the unpredictable title track with Le Bon.
A journey from darkness into a faint glow, this is really quite something, despite such arresting lines as, “I feel like graffiti on a urinal in the abattoir.”
Lives Outgrown
By Beth Gibbons
If St Vincent addresses broad existential fears, 59-year-old Beth Gibbons – the voice of Portishead – is closer to the personal. In sometimes spectral songs, she explores “motherhood, anxiety, menopause and mortality”, rare themes in popular music but here born of experience.
In the other-worldly Floating on a Moment she eyeballs the inevitable: “I’m heading toward a boundary that divides us … travelling on a voyage where the living have never been”, but tempering it with a children’s choral part. And Lost Changes stalks in with Pink Floyd-like moodiness, “Forever ends, you will grow old … don’t pretend you’re unaware.”
Far from being gloomy and morose, Gibbons couches stark realities in pillows of strings and synths, and neo-folk settings (the weary Oceans, where her heart is “tired and worn”, the resignation of For Sale with its solo violin passage).
The percussion-driven experimentation is familiar from Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (the environmentally conscious Rewind with “we all know what’s coming, gone too far”). The whispery Reaching Out soars in its closing overs and the Anglo-folk of Beyond the Sun takes off on galloping North African percussion with all the disconcerting claustrophobia of The Wicker Man. As ambitious and confident as St Vincent’s equally assured album – although very different – Beth Gibbons’ long overdue debut after numerous collaborations has been worth the wait.
These albums are available digitally, on CD and vinyl.
