As readers of this blog’s fine print will know,
while I roll what I’m going to review randomly, Rule #5 allows me to insert a
new (to me) album into the process if I choose to do so. Over the past few
years I have taken to rolling out of this new (to me) backlog, which usually sits
at around 100 albums or so.
On my last foray into the new section I rolled “Masseducation”,
which is St. Vincent’s acoustic reimagining of her previous album “Masseduction.”
It seemed wrong to review the reinterpretation before I ever gave the original
a full listen and since both were in the new music section…here we are.
I bet you can guess what album Disc 1207’s going to
be, after which I promise to return the Odyssey to regular lack-of-scheduled
programming.
Disc 1206 is… Masseduction
Artist: St.
Vincent
Year of Release: 2017
What’s up with the Cover? Warning: album cover may contain
suggestive scenes. The music has a few as well.
How I Came To Know It: I really liked St. Vincent’s previous
album (reviewed back at Disc 858) released a few years earlier, and the first few singles off of “Masseduction”
were great, so I took a chance on the rest.
How It Stacks Up: I have three St. Vincent albums. Of the three,
“Masseduction” is my favourite, so #1.
Ratings: 5 stars
Like the album cover, “Masseduction” is provocative,
and sexy, presented on the surface as awkward and artificial, but with a deeper
truth and integrity underneath. This is a complicated, thoughtful record that
gets better and better on every listen.
Stylistically, St. Vincent (real name Annie Clark) once
again displays her fearless willingness to borrow multiple musical styles and
bend them to her unflinching artistic vision. Techno, rock and pop elements all
blend and twist around one another, like three sets of legs under a set of
satin sheets.
If that image sounds a bit racy, well so does this
record. On “Masseduction” St. Vincent gives us thrills both above and below the
waistline, and then confronts us with our own voyeurism. “Pills” and “Los Ageless”
are anthems about the artificiality of modern existence, but to see them as
just this would be a mistake. They are equally about how we willingly embrace artificiality
as armour. Clark seems to be saying that we constructed our society this way
and that when we’ve peeled the onion down to the core, we will only find our
own desires fueling all the structures above. Consider the opening lines of “Los Ageless”:
“In Los Ageless,
the winter never comes
In Los Ageless, the
mothers milk their young
But I can keep
running
No, I can keep
running
The Los Ageless
hang out by the bar
Burn the pages of
unwritten memoirs
But I can keep
running
No, I can keep
running
“How can anybody
have you?
How can anybody
have you and lose you?
How can anybody
have you and lose you
And not lose their
minds, too?”
In the end, behind a series of killer back beats and
innovative guitar riffs we find our narrator exploring her own loss, real and
visceral despite all the artificiality wrapped around it.
On “Savior”
and the title track, St. Vincent explores our complex relationship with desire,
sexuality and objectification. “Savior”
is a song about a woman whose partner likes her to dress up in costumes. There
is some awkwardness in these roleplaying sequences, and even a little frustrated
boredom with a nurse outfit that “rides
and sticks to my thighs and my hips.” “Savior” is the sex that goes
with the drugs in “Pills” and the
rock and roll lifestyle of “Los Ageless,”
but the themes are similar: people put on masks to give themselves a little
space from the real, but the complexity of the human condition won’t be denied.
Many of these songs have the instruments artificially
dressed up as well – wearing layers of reverb and accessorized with machine-generated
back beats. They are the perfect mix of the organic, wrapping itself in the
artificial. It is subtle and clever, and – also important – catchy as hell. You
can just sit and groove along, or you can listen a little closer and let it up
into your head. It works equally well either way.
This alone would make “Masseduction” a brilliant
record, but St. Vincent adds songs that are deeply moving and intensely
personal. “New York” is a stripped
down song about regret and lost love, and “Happy
Birthday, Johnny” is about watching a loved one lose themselves in poor
life choices, and know there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Or it could be that these intensely personal songs
are just St. Vincent exploring the internal angst of those same characters out there
popping pills and donning sexy nurse outfits. It doesn’t really matter in the
end, because great art is great art, and “Masseduction” is great art. It is
musically profound, brave and powerful. You can let it wash over you like an
emotional tide or you can immerse yourself in its complex explorations of sex,
identity and society. Either way you won’t be disappointed.
Best
tracks: All
tracks, but in particular Hang On Me, Pills, Masseduction, Los Ageless, Happy
Birthday Johnny, Savior, New York, Slow Disco and Smoking Section. Yes, the
other 4 are good too.
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