St. Vincent "All Born Screaming" [Album] 2024

 All Born Screaming, Clark’s self-produced seventh album, goes for a hard reset on the St. Vincent project, not by going back to the harsh, alien textures of, say, 2011’s Strange Mercy, but by flicking the dial from “shock” to “console.” Musically, it feels like the first St. Vincent album since Marry Me presented without a unifying aesthetic: at various points, Clark incorporates Bond theme melodrama, Steely Dan-style prog, bouncy art pop and lechy industrial rock, making for what is arguably her loosest record, an exhale after years of fitting her songs into increasingly tight restraints.

It’s a freedom that carries through to the album’s emotional content. Clark’s records often display warmth and vulnerability in flashes, but All Born Screaming feels thoroughly romantic and highlights bits of beauty amid Clark’s usual lexicon of chaotic, violent imagery. On the dazed dream-pop ballad “The Power’s Out,” she sings about New York as a kind of hell created by its inhabitants; far from a horror story or an indictment, it sounds like a love song.

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TRACKLIST

1. Hell Is Near
2. Reckless
3. Broken Man
4. Flea
5. Big Time Nothing
6. Violent Times
7. The Power’s Out
8. Sweetest Fruit
9. So Many Planets
10. All Born Screaming (feat. Cate Le Bon)