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Report Card: A-
Annie Clark’s beginnings in the flocks of Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens hardly made her transformation to big stage rockstar thrashabout a foregone conclusion. And it’s a strange thing that in a year of ridiculously hyped releases—from Animal Collective to Grizzly Bear, and now Dirty Projectors—that the frequently-adored Clark would come out of comparative nowhere with the quite-good Actor, an album sufficiently superior to its precursor that positions St. Vincent as an unlikely force to be reckoned with. Yet this, as we well know, is a world capable of defying expectations.
Throughout its thirty-nine minutes, Actor demonstrates a continued development of depth and breadth for Clark, as these songs are meaty in comparison to previous work. Also, the apparent disconnect between the sweetness of her purposely-exposed face (plastering it on the cover of an album is a good way for people to know what you look like, jsyk) and the often dark and foreboding subject matter is more present than ever—rarely does a song go by without something at least mildly disturbing to pull from the lyrics. Add on top of that a full-band willingness to rock out, with even occasional hints of Kraut to boot, and songs like the brutal “Marrow” and the propulsive “Actor Out of Work” are for the first time possible.
But the big thing here is that asking a half dozen people which song on the album is their favorite may very well result in a half dozen different answers. With standouts of varying flavors populating the tracklist, there’s more than enough to catch your ear. Yet despite that wealth of intrigue, the album undeniably holds together as a complete work, and not as a smattering of tunes—whether this is so much by Clark’s design or just because her musical evolution tends to head in unified directions is beside the point, because the expansive, murky headphone experience of this album is solid enough to avoid warranting such pesky questions.
Despite all this goodness, though, there remains a hint of the unfinished to some songs, lending ample fuel to the theory that Clark’s best is yet to come—in a way, she is an artist still figuring things out, and it feels like the fusion between her voice and the oft-vicious instrumentation isn’t quite fully realized. So while Actor is undoubtedly a very pleasant surprise, its satisfactions are more surface-dwelling than they could potentially be, thus encouraging a been-there-done-that feel by the tenth or twentieth listen. But, for now, that’s just fine, because those first listens are up there with just about anything we’ve heard this year.
Listen to music by St. Vincent here.
For more hot off the press album reviews, including Animal Collective, Deerhunter, TV on the Radio, M. Ward, and many more, stop by Austin's own Transmission Entertainment.
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