[Welcome to Sophomore/Sophomoric, where we'll catalog the tiptoed journeys of the literally thousands of bands who have attempted, not all of them successfully, to navigate their way from debut success and past the proverbial "sophomore slump" into the rarefied air of "sophomore glory." Is that a term? It'd be better if it was alliterative. How about, "sophomore splendor"? That works better, yeah.]

Words by Jacob Barron

Artist: St. Vincent
Albums: Marry Me (2007) and Actor (2009)

I want Huey Lewis, sans the News, and Annie Clark (better known as St. Vincent) to collaborate, if for no other reason than the fact that they could release a record under the name Lewis & Clark. Sure, there are probably a number of other people that have Clark as a surname and are more stylistically aligned with Lewis’ brand of desperately caucasian rock and roll, but just imagine what Clark’s voice and trademark creepiness would add to “I Want a New Drug” or “Hip to Be Square.” St. Vincent just ripped it out of its chest, but I can assure you that the heart of rock and roll is still beating, Huey. Fear not.

St. Vincent / Now, Now
St. Vincent / Marrow

When I say that Clark has a trademark creepiness about her, and her music, what I really mean is that she has a trademark smiling creepiness. Everything she does is skewed in such a way that’s both pretty and violent, soothing and nauseating, and it’s that dichotomy that really motivates her sophomore album, Actor.

The first time I heard St. Vincent was in a car, which is where I first hear everything honestly. I can remember when I heard “Now, Now,” the opening track of her debut album Marry Me. Not only can I remember the exact moment and place on I-95 that I was driving when I heard those first notes, I also can’t remember any song since “Now, Now” with which I’ve so quickly fallen in love. Honestly, every other opener to the hundreds of albums that have changed my life since 2007 have come and gone, but I remember “Now, Now.” Everything about it appeals to my musical biases, from the harmonied backup voices, unexpectedly kick-heavy drums and surprisingly rocking climax.

Moving through the album, I came to put her in a silo with Feist. Like, Feist with curly hair, that’s what I thought. Is that sexist? I think that’s kind of sexist. Marry Me‘s title track was what did it really. Between the bouncing melody and the hand claps, that song is a Feist single waiting to happen, and that’s not a knock in any way. When viewed through the lens of that song, the album fits pretty well into Feist‘s wheelhouse of quirky, idiosyncratic love tunes disguised as songs your grandmother could enjoy. It’s sweet, and conventional without being unoriginal somehow, but I don’t think I was alone when I immediately tied these two artists together. Linking them probably says something about the casual sexism afforded to female artists in the world of pop, indie or not, like, oh they both have brown hair and sing semi-jazzy tunes, so they’re the same. It’s a snap judgment that’s only skin-deep, because after re-listening to Marry Me, I’m not sure that I could think of Feist or St. Vincent any more differently.

And the reason for that is that smiling creepiness I mentioned. Feist is an excellent songwriter, and that’s how she gets by. She’s so good that she can just do her thing without having to even attempt to explore some deeper, twisting impulses that she might have. In other words, I really wouldn’t say she has a trademark. She’s just a fantastic artist, one that’s better for lacking whatever you would consider a signature. St. Vincent has cultivated a trademark, and while I think Actor really plays up the whole sweet-but-murderous thing to the hilt, it was still there from the beginning, especially on Marry Me songs like “Your Lips are Red” and “Paris is Burning,” which could easily fit on either of her two albums (with a third out this week). “Your Lips are Red” specifically sounds like an artist reaching for a mood that’s maybe just a little beyond their grasp. It’s not a bad song, but it’s a little too rambunctious for its own good, and could’ve probably benefited from the restraint that Clark displays in spades on Actor. Still, these songs, especially when performed live, aren’t Feist songs by any measure. They’re Feist via Yoknapatawpha County or Castle Frankenstein, jazzy and quirky with a palpably gothic, violent undercurrent rushing beneath them.

Actor sustains a pretty high level of weirdness throughout its entire run, whereas Marry Me seems to get it all out on those two aforementioned songs, allowing the remainder of the album to cascade into gorgeous piano interludes and largely-undisturbed pleasantness. While I think Clark dials back the climaxes to a disturbingly sensible degree on Actor, except for maybe that awesome percussion at the end of “Just the Same but Brand New,” she still massively indulges in her taste for vomit-caked beauty, nowhere more so than on “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood,” a song title that could honestly serve as a thesis for Clark’s entire career up to this point.

St. Vincent debuted by subsuming some latently creepy songs into her own natural charm, but she planted the seeds of an ugly sort of pretty on Marry Me and reaps the harvest on Actor. Rather than refining her entire sound, she takes one initially semi-buried aspect of it and lets it spread out on its own, like ivy climbing up a brick wall. Songs like “Marrow” would’ve stuck out pretty sharply on Marry Me, just like the debut album’s title track would’ve sounded unadulteratedly sweet on Actor.

What makes St. Vincent so different and so deserving of your time and respect, is her ability to take this one admittedly skewed point-of-view, and apply it to an entire album without having it devolve into parody. She never jumps the shark in any meaningful way, and even on Actor‘s most indulgent moments (I’d count “Marrow” among them), she keeps one foot planted on the ground of solid songcraft, so maybe she does have more in common with Feist than I thought, as much as she does with any other good songwriter, male or female. Good songs make good albums, and Clark has always written good songs.

Step Forward, Step Backward, or Lateral Move: Lateral Move

Filed under: Sophomore/Sophomoric