St. Vincent - Messeduction
(Loma Vista)

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, seems to grow in stature and ambition with each new record she delivers. The one thing that remains constant: she is a supreme talent. With Masseduction, she once again has woven subversion, personal crisis and emotional warmth inside twisted pop songs with layers of electro, funk, indie rock and r&b. 
While some of her earlier records were focused on her inventive guitar style, Masseduction is very much a beat driven record with massive and pounding rhythms and buoyant synths. Her guitar playing is still interesting; as if she’s inserting her parts and splicing in blasts of scraping chords. “Pills” is a paranoid, and hyper-erratic, radio ready ripper with a hypnotic lyrical pattern mimicking the day-in, day-out banality of life through medication. “Sugarboy” is a pulsating, darkened dance track with ominous fuzz guitar and sugary instrumentation. Elsewhere she settles things way down for a lovely, piano-led swooner called “Happy Birthday, Johnny” before launching right into the minimal, cut-up funk of “Savior.” It’s a dizzying record but ultimately it’s impressive that she can merge pop sounds with her experimental tendencies.
Without question, others have accomplished this and yes, there are echoes of Bowie and Prince in her methodology. However she’s not aping their style or copping their moves. Clark has developed her own perspective around composing and producing records with the same knack for harnessing the cutting-edge within a pop context. And that’s the real trick isn’t it. A big achievement for St. Vincent and another step-forward in the world of avant-pop. (Dom)
Check out a track here.