Last November, St. Vincent was awarded a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in the field of performing arts. The honour, given to innovators in respective areas of expertise, prompted Stephen Colbert to ask the musician, ‘Is that why you have Einstein’s hair now?’
St. Vincent’s new self-titled album is her fourth full-length effort and offers a tighter, more mature collection of songs with a dose of Talking Heads influence. While her debut album showcased the bright-eyed youngster’s musical versatility and her sophomore album allowed her to innovate her sensibilities—usually in the form of combining disparate musical elements, often in the same song—then her third album was kicking herself into gear for a new age of St. Vincent music, and this fourth album continues on that track.
Gone are the strings, the cinematic and theatrical moments that marked her past work, which are replaced with more electronics, more guitar effects, and even more finely-tuned singing melodies. This self-titled album could be seen as a pop music effort, less experimental than Actor or Strange Mercy, but the songs display innovation in subtlety, the kind that only a mature musician would care about. Having said all that, you can always still expect a shocking, sludgy guitar solo at any point on one of her albums, which is worth listening to for that reason alone.
