Believe it or not, this album took a lot of effort to decode and figure out. In the end, mostly ambivalent on it, but there were pieces that worked. And now... ugh, let's get Linkin Park and Lana Del Rey over with. This is going to piss so many people off... but until then, stay tuned!
Well, this was an intellectual adventure, and one I enjoyed the entire way. Next up will be the Eli Young Band... and then Young Money and David Nail. Hold on, folks, this might not be pretty.
The term 'indie pop' has always got on my nerves. Not the music (for the most part), but the genre term itself. Springing up in the mid-80s, it describes music that was too weird or off-beat for the mainstream, but had a more melodic focus and was less characterized by angst. What always got on my nerves was the connotation associated with the genre: that simply being an indie act gave them music critic credibility they didn't always deserve. Furthermore, it denigrated pop music as corporate and derivative - and yeah, that's often true, but it's hard to deny that musical trends started in the indie scene often cross over into pop music or mainstream culture at large, and sometimes mainstream acts can do it just as well. And let's not forget, there was a point in the 90s where big chunks of the indie pop scene was enthusiastically embraced by adult alternative, shoegaze, emo, and even mainstream pop music (the 90s were weird like that). And honestly, a lot of it really sucked. Sure, there were gems in the rough, but a large reason I don't love 90s alternative music like most critics is because the twee explosion of indie pop often fell into gutless bland garbage that didn't have the brains or deeper insight to back up the pretentiousness. And look, while I get everyone has different tastes, the 'revolt into childhood' (the embrace of twee innocence and focusing on living little ordinary lives) attitude has never ever been something I've liked. And since most of it involved fitting with a very white, middle-class, mostly educated ideal, it always felt trite, small, and in the end not exactly progressive or all that intellectual. And if you embraced the 'twee' attitudes ironically, that was even worse, because not only were you promoting by association, you lost the best element of good indie pop which was the heartfelt earnestness. And with the growth of 90s nostalgia, the revival of the 'hipster ideal', and the increased mainstream success of the indie scene, I feel that some of these trends are going to be coming back. And from a cultural standpoint, it makes a lot of sense - my generation is less cynical than Gen X, we're a lot less embarrassed of liking the sillier elements of our past, and many of the 'revolt to childhood' ideals aren't far from the truth when people my age can't get jobs and are stuck living with their parents. But to some extent, these trends aren't exactly healthy for long term mature cultural development, just as Gen X cynicism wasn't precisely healthy either. It's because of these trends, for instance, that tropes like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl exist and have widespread popularity. Enter St. Vincent, the stage name of Annie Clark, singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso. Her name was originally taken from a Nick Cave song, and honestly, it's kind of a perfect fit because St. Vincent has a very similar brand of subversive darkness to her material. Starting with her debut album Marry Me, she's made a point of taking twee indie pop elements and tropes and then undercutting them with a seething, disturbing madness, and it's incredibly effective in a very baroque sense. It also helps matters that she's an incredibly inventive and talented songwriter, and all of her work has been pretty damn close to great. And thus, I was looking forward to delving into her new self-titled album, which early buzz was suggesting was even more weird and twisted than previous releases. And thus, I took some time to really delve into this record, try to dig deep and parse it out - what did I find?
