St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

[gump]

Daddy's Home is good shit to snort coke on a yacht to.

LOL. Great line.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

"Down" has the exact same stretched out vocal melody as the "PAAAAAIN" part in "You Know You're Right" by Nirvana. The latter of which is a great song.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

"Live in the Dream"...big Pink Floyd homage.

 

[cobl04]

I think it's her weakest since Marry Me. Cool vibe, but it's the first time that her music has felt kind of toothless since the beginning. I was a little bored, honestly. And that's strange to say because I don't think I disliked anything on it. It's just that the overall experience wasn't very exciting.

At its absolute worst, Masseduction was revealing and risked putting fans off. Daddy's Home is good shit to snort coke on a yacht to, like the last Arctic Monkeys record. But I know she's capable of better.

Not feeling the new St. Vincent record, guys. And I'm a sucker for that kind of sound. There are some nice moments for sure (I really love Down), but overall it's a bit...meh.

I'm really trying with it as well and you're both right... it's just kind of boring. I get the style she's going for, but she doesn't do it that well here. There's a few good songs, but even those ones don't really captivate me. It's not bad at all, like you LM I don't actively dislike anything, but it's just... meh.

It makes me more thankful for Masseduction, which I think is treated really harshly. There is nothing on Daddy's Home that comes within a light year of making me feel the way Happy Birthday Johnny, New York and Slow Disco do, and the poppier stuff that everyone hates is, for the most part, a lot of fun. I think it cops a lot of shit because it's such a big left turn for her, and she collaborated with Jack Antonoff, who indie fans seem to be put off by, and because of the artwork and aesthetics of it. The sequencing is fucking horrible but like half of my most favourite St Vincent songs are on Masseduction. I'm more annoyed by her reaction to that interview where she got asked about her dad, and her preciousness when she's come from a fair bit of privilege, and her inability to be open to the view that perhaps she hasn't had the absolute hardest life, and that I see weird ads offering Masterclasses in songwriting run by her, than I am by the left turn she took on Masseduction, the album's nonsensical tracklisting aside.

My final point: I think you're really underselling Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino.

 

[cobl04]

Hrrmmm... and then I saw this clip of her talking about Pretzel Logic and Any Major Dude Will Tell You inspired the album and how she's seen Steely Dan eight times and now Daddy's Home is my favourite album ever.

[tweet]1393289103739920387[/tweet]

 

[gump]

I'm more annoyed by her reaction to that interview where she got asked about her dad, and her preciousness when she's come from a fair bit of privilege, and her inability to be open to the view that perhaps she hasn't had the absolute hardest life, and that I see weird ads offering Masterclasses in songwriting run by her, than I am by the left turn she took on Masseduction, the album's nonsensical tracklisting aside.

Oh yes, all of this. Also add her experience producing the latest Sleater-Kinney record and leading to Janet Weiss quitting. There's a certain amount of hubris that her recent tours tried to exude, and I think some of that crossed from performance into real life, if that makes any sense? I find that her personality has become increasingly grating particularly as her celebrity has grown.

 

[lazarus]

Pretzel Logic is overrated, though. I've seen numerous takes saying it's the best Dan album and that's insane. Too many half-baked, short songs and sketches, Barrytown is meh, and it has possibly the single weakest album closer of theirs alongside Throw Back the Little Ones on the subsequent Katy Lied.

It has some amazing highs, like the first three songs are impeccable as is the title track, but it just doesn't compete with Countdown to Ecstasy, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, or Aja in terms of overall consistency and the number of memorable tunes. I rank it next to Gaucho as a mixed bag.

 

[LemonMelon]

All Steely Dan albums up until Two Against Nature are either very good or excellent, and that album is also pretty good. One of the most consistent bands of their time.

 

[cobl04]

Not to derail the St Vincent thread, but I did just listen to it, and Laz is pretty spot on about their being a difference in quality between the first three tracks and Pretzel Logic and the rest.

Rikki Don't Lose That Number is a song I grew up hearing on our classic rock radio station long before I got into Steely Dan, and it still sounds absolutely fresh as fuck. It's SUCH a good song. When Donald Fagen goes, "you could have a change of heeeaaaarrrttt", damn man.

 

[lazarus]

All Steely Dan albums up until Two Against Nature are either very good or excellent, and that album is also pretty good. One of the most consistent bands of their time.

Two Against Nature is missing a certain dynamic and the songs don't pop in the way that they used to, but in terms of writing, arrangement, and performance, it's more consistent than Pretzel Logic or Gaucho. Now that's not to say I prefer to those in a desert island sense, but I think it's safe to call it very good. But there probably isn't a single song on there I'd call essential, the closest maybe being Jack of Speed.

I'm in a slight minority in preferring Everything Must Go; it might be the fact that it was recorded more as a live band in the studio together rather than their typical cut-and-paste process, maybe it's that it was laid down on analog tape. But the vocal melodies and tunes are a bit more memorable. Blues Beach, Green Book, The Things I Miss the Most, and the fitting farewell of the title track. Again, it's hard to call these essential in terms of the whole discography but I would include a couple of them in a Best Of compilation before anything on 2VN.

So yeah, I think both are in the "very good" camp and very consistent in terms of quality.

Not to derail the St Vincent thread, but I did just listen to it, and Laz is pretty spot on about their being a difference in quality between the first three tracks and Pretzel Logic and the rest.

 

[gump]

The Pitchfork review was pretty spot on, and this paragraph stuck with me:

A reference to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” in “The Melting of the Sun” is similarly ill-considered. Like Hozier before her, Clark dilutes Simone’s fierce and intentional anti-racist activism by listing her alongside white celebrities. The album’s title track deploys a sticky bassline, a syncopated funk groove, and the voices of seasoned Black back-up singers Kenya Hathaway and Lynne Fiddmont to tell the story of Clark and her father, a white man who committed a white-collar crime. Why deploy the conventions of Black music to reckon with his sins? Why wear a mask at all?

 

[iron yuppie]

I'm feeling this album a lot more than most of you, it would seem.