St Vincent

Philip Reeve turns his attention to that modern-type beat music.

Now I don't set myself up as a music critic.  I know almost nothing about music, and for long periods of my life I've been happy to listen to none at all.  Nowadays I have an MP3 player, but it only comes out when I'm on a long train journey, and is mostly filled with stuff I liked when I was fifteen - listening to it is more about nostalgia than music appreciation.

However, I do sometimes stumble upon something new that seems good and worth sharing, and one of these good things is Annie Clark, who records under the name St Vincent.  I have no idea what musical genre she falls into - perhaps she falls between several, and that's why I never hear her on the radio.  Her voice is very clear and sweet, and her lyrics often verge on the whimsical, but she's never twee: there's something sinister in there too, and the arrangements are often strange, decked out with grinding guitars and bursts of sudden drama.  In a way she reminds me a bit of David Lynch - that sense of something strange and twisted lurking behind the white picket fences o' Middle America... except that I always found that deeply boring and predictable when David Lynch did it, and St Vincent is never either of those things.

Enough:  I think you'd better have a listen for yourself: here's one of the singles from her recent album Actor. 





And this is another 'track' (as I believe they're called) from the same album, this time played live: