No matter how sharp Annie Clarks tongue, early criticism often focused on her femininity. In 2007, a review praised her big-girl voice; in 2009, another mentioned her small and fragile vocals; in 2011, she was called waifishly stunning, her singing coquettish. (Guess the writers gender!) And yes, she is stunning, and her voice has carried both raw rage and dulcet adoration with equal skill since her debut as St. Vincent, 2007s Marry Me. But for a long time, these qualities, and the stereotypes that went with them, dominated her public perception.
Then came the confounding shock of white. On the cover of 2014s St. Vincent, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this weekend, Clark sits on a throne, commanding. Her hair, once curly and brown, is now gray fading into white. Her gaze is stark. She might be an alien ruler come to Earth. Shes definitely the one in charge.
Sleater-Kinney Bemoan Our Current Era on New Song 'Can I Go On'St. Vincent Carries Out a Courteous Robbery in Red Hearse's 'Half Love' VideoTop 30 Stephen King Movies, RankedWar of the Crowes
St. Vincent is not a moment of stylistic metamorphosis; its the moment when Clark looked the listener dead-on and declared ownership over her work. By becoming the alien to borrow a phrase from her frequent inspiration David Bowie she positioned herself outside of gendered expectations. As the despot on that albums cover, she seemed to say: Im not a Woman In Rock. You dont even know what I am.
The album cycles through birth, death and rebirth, beginning with a near-fatal experience in Rattlesnake, where, running naked from mortal danger, shes baptized by her sweat. The next track, Birth in Reverse, implies death by its title, as well as the reference to the Lorrie Moore short story of the same name (in which a Celtic grave resembles a birth in reverse). Later, Clark wryly references her rebirth on Every Tear Disappears, repeating the lines Yeah, I live on wires/Yeah, Ive been born twice.
Clark has scrutinized traditional gender roles throughout her work, but before St. Vincent, her songs most often centered around women forced into domesticity. On this album, though, she sidesteps the gender binary in favor of something more fluid. The wayward characters of Prince Johnny pray to be a real boy or girl, a phrase whose relative ambiguity challenges what real means; Huey Newton finds a non-specific you entombed in the shrines/of zeroes and ones. Whether its a number binary or gender binary doesnt much matter. Clark seems to say that we are all trapped in something outside reality, whether its a Matrix-esque cyberspace, or the fantasies on TV, or gender expectations.
For all its references to digital unreality, the album has an undeniably animalistic side, as well, with its scrappy protagonist sprinting toward unreachable clarity. There are feral hearts, leashes and rattlesnakes; in two different songs, Clark is running. She sings about the mundanity of daily masturbation. The love songs, somewhat disguised by brass and chunky electric guitar, have a primal feeling, too, full of severed fingers, bleeding spleens and literal stolen hearts.
In all these songs, in different ways, St. Vincent suggests an escape from the cyclical commodification of women. If Clark can break free of the gender binary whether by dying and being reborn, by floating into undefined space, or by emphasizing her animal nature then perhaps she can avoid being objectified as she has before.
On her next album, 2017s MASSEDUCTION, Clark dove into latex and leather, presenting herself as a sultrier, more mature self than before, only for another unnamed you to force her to try on costumes a nurse, a nun, a teacher for their pleasure. Ultimately, she finds, none of this shit fits. She cant be what her dresser desires, either as a costumed stereotype or as their savior. Its a realization she began working toward three years earlier: On St. Vincent, she knew that even the most liberated performer is still a commodity, still being sold and tasked with selling herself. Trapped within a digital world, a capitalistic world and a restrictive gender binary, she pleaded: Wont somebody sell me back to me?