St. Vincent (album)

"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."

St. Vincent was announced on December 9, 2013, and "Birth in Reverse" was released for free download.^[4][7] A second single, "Digital Witness", was released on January 6, 2014.^[11] An additional release of "Digital Witness", featuring "Del Rio" as a B-side, was released in the United Kingdom on January 24, 2014.

A music video directed by Chino Moya was released on January 31, 2014, for "Digital Witness".^[12][13] On February 5, Clark debuted "Prince Johnny" on the radio show KCRW: Morning Becomes Eclectic. On February 9, she debuted songs at fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg's runway show for New York Fashion Week.^[14] A music video directed by Willo Perron was released on December 16, 2014, for "Birth in Reverse".^[15]

St. Vincent entered the US Billboard 200 albums chart at No. 12 and the UK Albums Chart at No. 21, becoming St. Vincent's highest-charting album in both countries.^[16][17] The album sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first week.^[18]

A deluxe edition was released on February 9, 2015, in the UK, with the album available only as a digital download in the US on February 10. It featured the previously unreleased "Bad Believer"; "Del Rio", a B-side from the "Digital Witness" single and a bonus track on the Japanese edition of St. Vincent; "Digital Witness" (DARKSIDE remix), previously released as a single; and "Pietà" and "Sparrow", originally released together on a limited edition 10" pink vinyl on November 28, 2014, for Record Store Day.^[19]

Clark described St. Vincent as "a party record you could play at a funeral."^[20] The opening track, "Rattlesnake", is about an experience Clark had while walking in the desert, which she described as a "commune with nature". However, the opening line, "I followed the power lines back from the road", suggests that Clark is separating herself from a dependency on artificial or digital power.^[21]

Other songs have more personal connections. "I Prefer Your Love", the sixth track, is about Clark's mother, who was briefly ill.^[21] The closing track, "Severed Crossed Fingers", takes inspiration from a line in a short story by American novelist Lorrie Moore.^[22] The sentence from which the title is drawn, "He thinks of severed, crossed fingers found perfectly survived in the wreckage of a local plane crash last year",^[23] is used by Clark to convey the human heart's capacity for hope, even when hope seems futile. Of the song, Clark said, "That one's all me" in an interview with Studio 360.^[24] Later, in an interview with Pitchfork, she added, "I sang that in one fucking take, cried my eyes out, and the song was done".^[25]

Clark described St. Vincent as "more confident. I'm extending a hand; I want to connect with people. Strange Mercy, which is a record I'm proud of, [was] definitely a very accurate record of my life at a certain time, but it was more about self-laceration, all the sort of internal struggle. St. Vincent is very extroverted."^[26]

More information Aggregate scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	8.6/10[27]
Metacritic	89/100[28]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[29]
The A.V. Club	A−[1]
The Daily Telegraph	[30]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[31]
The Guardian	[32]
The Independent	[33]
NME	8/10[34]
Pitchfork	8.6/10[35]
Rolling Stone	[36]
Spin	8/10[37]

Close

The album has received widespread critical acclaim. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, it scored an average score of 89 out of 100, based on 40 independent reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[28] AnyDecentMusic? collated reviews giving the album an average score of 8.6 based on 40 reviews.^[27] This score makes the record part of AnyDecentMusic?'s All-Time Top 10 albums.^[38] Writing for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis awarded the album a perfect five stars, calling it "an embarrassment of fantastic songs" and "a straightforward triumph".^[32]

At Rolling Stone, 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."^[36] Alex Denny of The Fly rated the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, describing it as "her most ebullient, ambitiously styled music to date".^[39] NME, The Guardian, musicOMH, Entertainment Weekly, and Slant Magazine named it the best album of 2014.

Credits are adapted from the St. Vincent liner notes.^[61]