If you’ve missed the boat on St. Vincent—otherwise known as Annie Clark, former member of the Polyphonic Spree—then you’ve missed some very, very good music. A good place to start would be her self-titled fourth album, released this year, which features 11 warped pop-rock songs pitched somewhere between Bowie and the Bangles. It is, by popular consensus, one of the year’s best albums, and “Birth in Reverse,” one of its standout songs, now has a music video that’s no less impressive.
The video is simple yet surreal, with the singer appearing everywhere from smoky rooms to outer space. It’s worth noting that, with both her new album and this video, Clark has been cultivating a new image, one defined by a stripped-down look and a cold, quirky air of detachment. The aesthetic jibes well with her strange, off-kilter music, and is most evident in her stage persona, which combines dead-eyed whimsy with blurted guitar solos and a highly stylized, semaphore-like dance style.
