St. Vincent

Actor (4AD)

By Jonathan Shipley
Published: May 8th, 2009 | 9:00am

Actor is so much better than St. Vincent’s debut album, Marry Me, and that’s saying something, because Marry Me made many listeners want to do just that — marry her. Indeed, Marry Me received oodles of accolades and awards for St. Vincent (née Annie Clark), and rightly so. The album was thick with charm, challenging arrangements, and lyrics suffused with wisdom and wonderful word craft. With a magnetic stage presence and well-regarded musical chops (she plays a mean Moog), St. Vincent has blossomed since that 2007 debut. Those two years made a world of difference for Actor — it’s damn good.

Immersing herself in some favorite films — Sleeping Beauty, Stardust Memories, The Wizard Of Oz — she began each song as her own private film score and then shaped structures, melodies, and lyrics to it. All to dazzling effect. “The Strangers” sounds like an interlude amidst a romantic ‘60s French film: all about lost love. “The Party” is a smart and woozy Billie Holiday–esque number. However, the best track of the 11 offered is “Black Rainbow,” a mounting cinematic piece both lush and dissonant in its existence, a hard yet beautiful number that weaves and interweaves between lull and crescendo.

Formerly a background vocalist for the Polyphonic Spree and a member of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band, you can hear those musicians permeating in her own music, with dollops of Feist, the Decemberists, Laura Veirs, and Regina Spektor. But, oh, St. Vincent is not to be compared to. She’s to be compared with.

Simply put, the new record is ambitious and it works. More confident, she is; more lyrically challenging, it is; tremendous musical arrangements, it has. Co-produced by Clark and John Congleton (Modest Mouse, the Polyphonic Spree), Actor is leaps and bounds better than Marry Me — to the point that those wanting to marry St. Vincent previously will now want to stand before her, performing odd sacrificial ceremonies atop a lava-bubbling mountain of musicians that she far supersedes.

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