A St. Vincent Appreciation

Photo by David Greenwald

In the day-to-day grind of blogosphere hype, and indie fandom at large, it’s easy to lose sight of the genre’s true lightning rods. (As opposed to Lightning Bolt.) The great tragedy of the Best Coast album is that it’s inspired mountains of love and hate and discussions (from this blog included) that could’ve been better served on an artist, well, worth having opinions on. Crazy For You is sometimes a good record, sometimes a bad one, but it’s never as Best New Music great or 0.0 terrible as the current state of music discourse demands it to be. So I hope you watched St. Vincent’s performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival last night, either online or in the sweaty crowd. Annie Clark is, almost inarguably, the most interesting girl — and maybe the coolest person, period — in indie rock. Her music is vocally charismatic; lyrically evocative without the myopic seriousness of, say, Joanna Newsom; sonically visceral; melodically adventurous and pretty much just the best. She merges influences from Radiohead to Arrested Development with the satisfying ease of a Derek Fisher three-pointer. (The fact that she’s Milan Fashion Week beautiful doesn’t hurt.)

Stereogum reported today that Clark and Talking Heads mind-bender David Byrne are collaborating, for what could potentially be her next album. I don’t think I need to tell you, but as we struggle to keep enjoying our briefly beloved summer jams, this is something we should actually get hyperbolic about.

Previously:
St. Vincent – “Mistaken For Strangers” (The National cover)
First Look: St. Vincent – Actor