Label: Beggars Banquet
Release Date: 03/09/07
Rating:
Well, it's been a pretty hectic couple of years for 24 year old Annie Clark. When she's not performing with The Polyphonic Spree or as part of Sufjan Stevens' backing band, she has been touring as a support act for Midlake and John Vanderslice and putting out records under the pseudonym St. Vincent.
'Marry Me' is an accomplished album where songs flit between classy jazz café style tracks, and in her kookier moments, vignettes that have the same skewed take on the pop song as Kate Bush. Clark switches between styles with such ease that an upbeat - and certainly more dramatic - track such as 'Your Lips Are Red' does not sound odd sitting next to the much mellower, almost Tori Amos-esque 'Marry Me'.
The opener and first single off of the album, 'Now, Now' is a somewhat unusual track with ethereal verses and an eerie sounding chorus, before is rises to a breathtaking and somewhat chaotic crescendo. 'Your Lips Are Red' is one of the highlights of the album with Clark at her most seductive; crooning over thumping drums, distorted bass and random piano stabs. It is also evident that Clark is quite the lyricist. The following song is the title track, which is a jazzier and mainly piano based number where lyrics comfortably change between the devotional "Marry me John/I'll be so good to you" to the witty and darkly humorous "We'll do what Mary and Joseph did/Without the kid".
'All My Stars Aligned' begins as a lovely jazzy number embellished,as with much of the album, with rather strange sounding guitars, nice piano tinkling and all backed by a swirling landscape, before changing its mood into a darker sounding piece with a rather oppressing cello arrangement. 'Apocalypse Song' delves into more Tori Amos territory in terms of style and cryptic lyrics such as "Wait, I'll be swifter than the speed of light/Carbon my body a billion years of time". 'Landmines' is the most romantic song you'll hear this year, and 'What Me Worry' is far and away the classiest you'll hear.
Whether this album will be well-received or not in today's current trend of indie-rave hipsters and jaded emo scenesters remains to be seen. It is unquestionable, though, that St. Vincent's 'Marry Me' is indeed a breath of fresh air and perhaps even a modern classic too.
Ryan Cavinder
St Vincent Official Site
St Vincent Myspace
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