4/5
Annie's Home.
HMV, 2017. I have a confession to make. Listening to Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent's 2017 classic 'MASSEDUCTION' over and over on the companies stereo until we realized it was too blue for the Joni Mitchell crowd (we ain't saying anything is wrong with that) and had to take it off our daily, regular rotation (imagine serving an elderly lady whilst listening to the lyrics to 'Young Lover', "I miss the taste of your tongue" play). It's the only album Clark that's darkened my door. Even if I even garden to it like Bill Murray singing along to Bob Dylan's 'Shelter From The Storm' hosing down his flags for another perfect Bill moment at the end of the movie...'St. Vincent'. I know 2007's 'Marry Me' debut, the stunning sophomore 'Actor', 2011's 'Strange Mercy', the 'Love This Giant' duet album with David Byrne and the eponymous throne-taker are all definitive discs. I just haven't got round to them yet (hey, this is a guy born just outside of Liverpool who didn't get The Beatles until he was 25 (I know right). Now a decade later they're in everything I do), I've just been stuck with this mass seduction. Even the stripped down and naked, back to ivory skin basics of the piano perfect 'MassEducation' schooling a year later couldn't bring me back (although I regret not immersing myself in these acoustics like I regretted the night this hoops head was in New York and chose a Knick game over Annie performing on the other side of Broadway across the bridge in Brooklyn. Really...the Knicks (although we can't say that much longer. Isn't that right Julius Randle?)). The point is I'll get round to those classics soon, saving each one for their own time, that will be like discovering a new book, or movie to my patient pleasure. I even listened to the 'MASSEDUCTION' that made its way to me buying Spotify premium to cure my addiction once His Masters Voice weened me off it this morning one more time before daddy came home for the new album from Clark and her first original one in almost five years (WAIT...WHAT?!). Proving just how fresh her last 'Los Ageless' album was. From the 'Pills' popped with the vocal assist from Cara Delevingne. The beautiful ode to 'Happy Birthday Johnny'. The sexual 'Savior' that whispered dominating tones over a local seaside town stores clientele. My latest favourite 'Fear The Future'. And the epic conclusion that feels like a trilogy of 'Dancing With A Ghost', 'Slow Disco' and 'Smoking Section' for an album that still hangs on me like the regret when I walk the streets with the soundtrack playing to 'New York'. Let's hear it.
Now 'Daddy's Home' for the new album that will father my speakers for decades to come and it has nothing to do with that Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg movie, or even the 'Savior' of a "teachers little denim skirt for your seduction education that "ruler and desk" will "make it hurt." Although this seventies soul is always sexy. The Jack Antonoff assisted album is inspired in turn by both Annie's fathers release from prison in 2019 and the Soho New York City scene and sound of the first half of the 1970's. And like a lightning bolt to the face, Ziggy Stardust himself, David Bowie would be proud of the closest musical hero to him, even if just for one night. And I'm saying this with just over one album heard. In this Electric Lady studios after Nina Kravitz rewired 'Masseduction' you 'Pay Your Way In Pain' these days and this lead single smarts in all its profound punctuation. The new look, bobbed blonde dropping the latest bombshell to her amazing aesthetic. "Stand up/sit down/hands up/break down" as Elton John at the Troubadour piano comes into play with a music video that takes it back to Kate Bush dancing around Top Of The Pops like 'Running Up That Hill' to 'Wuthering Heights'. Until "last nights heels on the morning train" take you a long way back 'Down And Out Dowtown' on the soundtrack to storytelling at its finest from this anti femme fatale stereotype that is as killer as walking previous "unwelcome" at the park pointed heels all over you like Sinatra boots. That's Nancy...to be Frank. Digging the crates of the "basement of her past" for her best record off her most atmospheric album to date, for the record.
Hands to the glass, "I send autographs in the visitation room" she sings on 'Daddy's Home' title-track in her register signature. Talking about how they both did time over seventies screams and scenes from a prison drama that locked down is all too real for this artist who is now free...just like the person she's always wanted to be. She's already paid her dues. So it's time to platinum pay her back on her most personal passion project yet that's the gold. She takes you away in the slow burning fever of 'Live In The Dream'. "Hello, do you know where you are", she asks the world in a haze with this beautiful midnight malaise. "There's a lot of people here who want to do you harm/stay with me fallen lamb and I'll keep you in my arms". Its lucky she found us when she did like the mothers milk of a mothers love to the bone. Even the "monsters gone" of Lennon's legendary loving 'Beautiful Boy' would be in awe of this daddy here. Whilst 'The Melting Of The Sun' will take the rest of you away in the atmosphere of a musical trip that soothes like radiant light, instead of burning acid in this toxic world of trolls and "hot takes". Those 'Humming' interludes harmonise with this too, before Annie Clark calls 9-11 ("what's your emergency") on 'The Laughing Man'. "If life's a joke, then I'm dying laughing" she vows on this beautiful, burning ode to a desire for the higher. "You hit me one time/imagine my surprise/when you hit me two times/you got yourself a fight" she counters from her corner on "I'll take you", 'Down', never proving out and reestablishing the head of the household position on a new equal standing. On 'Somebody Like Me' she proves there is no one like her. Whilst kids WON'T be made on 'My Baby Wants A Baby' which shows the other side of the fire of desire and our agency of choice on the best sounding track of the set. "But I want to play guitar all day (please do. How about that riff?)/make all my meals in microwaves (I hear ya Anne)". So DING! Just dance '...At The Holiday Party' as the trumpets play. Because this one cuts a rug to the past that the 'Chemtrails Over The Country Club' could only dream of. And we mean this as no diss to Lana Del Rey. We're not taking shots at one of the greatest of this generation. It's just Vincent is a legend on a whole other level with each album being another beautiful chapter of her career in classic concept, as definitively different and sensationally separate from the past that she hallmarks in this call back. "You can't hide from me" she warns over and over again to close before the last lick of the sugary sweet 'Candy Darling' to finally get your teeth into. Biting back, back home in the seduced charts of the mass hearts, this is more than the Daddy. This is Annie. All hail the Queen of saints. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Down And Out Downtown', 'Live In The Dream', 'My Baby Wants A Baby'.
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