St. Vincent Actor
I have been a fan of Annie Clark’s since I accidentally discovered her debut album, Marry Me, in June 2006, the week it came out. I was instantly enamored with her oddly wonderful mixture of sweetness and guitar-shredding chaos. Marry Me was one of my favorite albums of that year, and unlike many of my other favorites from that year, it actually got better over time.
On Actor, Annie has transposed some of the wicked guitar arrangements from Marry Me to a full-bodied orchestral freakout. Many of its tracks began as musical scores for some of my favorite movies, and while the title may mislead one to feel it is a bombastic, cinematic album, it is actually quite the opposite—Clark has written an album of intimate domesticity, embodying female characters who find themselves bound by the tethers of their own femininity, merely acting out their assumed gender roles while constantly seeking their own forms of independence (with varying degrees of success).
The biggest “actor” on Actor is Clark herself, who, through clever and often heartbreaking lyrics, finds the humanity of her characters, and represents their struggle in her patented sound—a shaky balance of honey-voiced vocals and swirling Disney woodwinds with some truly disgusting sounding fuzz. Beneath all the sweetness of Clark’s feminine characters lies darkness, violence, deep sadness that endangers (and often engulfs) their saccharine put-ons.
Clark is quickly becoming one of the most inventive pop songwriters of our time, making music that is at once challenging, intelligent, and extremely melodic. And though I have dedicated more Facebook status updates to her than I care to admit, (did I mention that she’s absolutely beautiful and I’m totally in love with her? I’m not sure if I did…) my awkward obsession with her stems solely from a deep respect and love for the work she creates, for the intense feelings it evokes within me. And I don’t think I’m alone.
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