St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
Annie Clark has, on her third album, perfected a recognisable formula. She sets up gorgeous and dreamy songs, with light and drifting arrangements, helped by her lovely voice. Then she slowly introduces a subtly unsettling element or two, through touches in the music but mostly in the lyrics. Finally in come her guitar riffs, bracing and fuzzy, to thrillingly blow the song apart.
Amazing single “Surgeon”, for instance goes from “You Only Live Twice” waltz through choruses of ‘find a surgeon to come cut me open’ into a surprisingly funky ending and a proggy guitar and synth explosion which could fit on Wish You Were Here. Strange Mercy as a whole does shift the elements around a bit rather than follow that exact order - "Chloe in the Afternoon" takes almost no time before the fuzzy riffing and leaves its uneasy peace until later; "Cruel"'s almost comically buzzy guitar doesn't so much puncture the song as emphasise its existing strangeness; "Champagne Year" is pure melancholic reverie all the way. The album's strengths, though, are very clear and consistent. That’s no bad thing because it really does work and keeps sounding fresh. This is helped a great deal by Annie's expertise in writing songs perfectly balanced between too much mystery and too little, on a borderline where they ring emotionally true but are not tied down and have full scope for musical flights of imagination.
A special word is needed for closer “Year of the Tiger”, one of my favourite songs of the year. It takes the same Bond theme aesthetics as “Surgeon” and blows them up bigger still, dreamscapes stretching gorgeously into the distance. It also sees Annie on the run from unknown forces with a suitcase of cash in the back of her car, calling on the whole of America to do her a favour yet still sounding quietly assured. The song finishes with the narrative still tantalisingly unresolved but it’s romantic, funny, and really moving.
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