St. Vincent - St. Vincent

St. Vincent is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter St. Vincent, released in February 2015 via Lorna Vista Recordings.

Anne "Annie" Clark, better known by her stage name St. Vincent, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. After studying at Berklee College of Music for three years, she began her music career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree. Clark was also a member of Sufjan Stevens's touring band before forming her own band in 2006.

St. Vincent's work has received consistent praise for its distinct musical style, which blends soft rock, experimental rock, electropop, and jazz influences. Her debut album was Marry Me (2007), followed by Actor (2009) and Strange Mercy (2011). She released a collaborative album with David Byrne in 2012 titled Love This Giant.

Her fourth solo album, self-titled St. Vincent, was released in February 2014 and was produced by John Congleton. The album features collaborations with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss and Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith. The tracks were arranged and demoed by Annie Clark in Austin, Texas and recorded at the Elmwood studio in Dallas.

Clark described St. Vincent as "a party record you could play at a funeral”. She is quoted in Uncut magazine describing the album as follows:  “…This is a more primary colour record than I've done in the past. It's generally a bit brighter. It was less emotionally fraught than when I was writing Strange Mercy. There's an exuberance in Love This Giant, and maybe some of that carried on into this record. It's entertainment. It's fun… I did a lot of sketching for St Vincent in GarageBand before going into the studio. The process of actually recording it was less about discovery and putting the Frankenstein's monster together, and a bit more about execution. There were a lot of things that had already been decided long before I walked into the studio. It was a different experience than Strange Mercy or Actor. Recording took about six months all in, around May 2013. John and I usually work every day and take maybe one day off every ten or twelve days...”

The album received widespread critical acclaim upon release and Metacritic scored an average score of 89 out of 100, based on 40 independent reviews, indicating "Universal Acclaim".

At Rolling Stone magazine, Jon Dolan awarded the album four stars out of five, hailing it as "her tightest, tensest, best set of songs to date, with wry, twisty beats pushing her lovably ornery melodies toward grueling revelations" and noting that "the playful way these songs contort makes pain feel like a party."

St. Vincent was named album of the year by The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, NME, and Slant Magazine, as well as second best album of the year by Time magazine. The album won her a 2015 Grammy for Best Alternative Album, her first Grammy award. She was the first woman in 20 years to win a Grammy in that category.

Check out the singles:  “Birth In Reverse”; “Digital Witness”; Prince Johnny”; “Regret”; and “Bad Believer”.

This LP record is a 2015 repressing on black vinyl with a gold embossed sleeve, pressed in Europe.