"Putting out a record is like having a Bridezilla-style wedding every two to three years," St. Vincent's Annie Clark told the viewers of a pristine, fuschia-heavy, faux press conference in which she annouced details of her new album, Masseduction.Her fifth album, and her first since 2014's St. Vincent,will be out Oct. 13 on Loma Vista. After introducing the record, she told viewers she would be "taking questions in the style of Sarah Huckabee Sanders."
Concurrent to the event, St. Vincent released a new single, the fully vogue-ready "Los Ageless," which follows the wistful piano ballad "New York," released earlier this year.
Clark has been teasing the possibility of an album announcement for days on social media and her Facebook page — and weeks, if you factor in a very album-focused profile from The New Yorker.
Clark recorded Masseduction with Jack Antonoff, who she praised in the opening of this morning's press conference. If Antonoff's involvement wasn't already a hint (he's produced Lorde, Taylor Swift, Sia and Fifth Harmony ... that is to say, severely pop artists) of a shift in direction, the attention to detail and media-savvy muscle she's put behind the campaign of her new record cements it. And maybe it's not so much a shift in direction, but an increase in ambition; Clark is clearly aiming for the mainstream, but in service of a familiar satire and transposition.
To wit, she's been releasing a series of video clips since Sunday produced with Carrie Brownstein (some choice cuts below) that mock music journalists and the kinds of questions she consistently receives, like, "What's it like being a woman in music?" Where Taylor Swift wants to dominate the conversation, Clark seems to be politely asking why she's so easily able to.
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