If you paid attention to my listening stats over the past few weeks, you would have noticed a couple artists staking a claim in the weekly top 10. One of those would be the absolutely delightful St. Vincent. One of my recent acquisitions thanks to eMusic, Marry Me is an album that took me a few tries to get into and now captivates me. I’ve listened to it just about every other morning for the past couple of weeks.
Annie Clark seem to get a lot of comparisons to Bjork, but I just don’t get it. Yes, she’s quirky. Yes, her music goes all over the place. But her voice has a far more intimate tone than Bjork’s, and her music feels more like that of a modern singer/songwriter than an operatic experimenter. Her sweet cry of “Mary me, John / Mary me, John / I’ll be so good to you” on the title track makes you want to wrap her up in a blanket and take her home - not put her up on a stage and idolize.
While she is difficult to pigeonhole, the video for “Jesus Saves, I Spend” will give you a fairly good impression of the album:
Isn’t that a brilliant way to start your day? Innocence in music can be a wonderful thing. Now if only that innocence could score me some tickets to Bowery Ballroom…
I downloaded this last year but it got lost in the shuffle, as it was a bumper crop of great music. 2008 is shaping up to be a letdown so I will give this more attention.