Actor

St. Vincent
Actor
9 out of 10

Do you remember the scene in 9 to 5 where the women are fantasizing about how they would kill Mr. Hart and Lily Tomlin's character imagines a fairy tale world where everything is gruesome and gory, but a little bit sweet? Well, somehow I feel that St. Vincent is channeling that sentiment on her second release Actor.

Over swirling loops of strings and her own cooing voice, Actor begins with the song "The Strangers" which sounds like a lost Disney ballad. Although the music is bright and cheerful, this mood is betrayed by the narrator who is chastising her lover who she has become bored with, telling herself to "paint the black hole blacker" and dismissing him with lines like "desperate doesn't look good on you/neither does your virtue."



Actor essentially becomes the musical equivalent of movies such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, wherein the seemingly calm and beautiful surface hides discontent beneath. Time and time again St. Vincent puts forth music of such beauty and subverts it with a narrator that is seething underneath. The housewife in "Save Me From What I Want" is a "wife in watercolors/I can wash away/what seventeen cold showers/couldn't wash away."



In "Laughing With A Mouth of Blood" a woman who appears to have left an abusive spouse/lover muses that by leaving her situation she has become a pariah and "all my old friends aren't so friendly/and all my haunts are now all haunting me."



"The Neighbors" contemplates a woman who could easily be Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road, slowly losing sense of herself and her purpose "How can Monday be alright/Then on Tuesday lose my mind/Tomorrow's some kind of stranger/Who I am not supposed to see."



"The Party" details a party that the narrator finds stultifying, going through her mind trying to keep from saying or doing anything inappropriate to cure the boredom; "Do you have any change or button or cash?/Oh my pockets hang out like two surrender flags/Oh, but I'd pay anything to keep my conscience clean."



This is perhaps one of the best Cd's to be released this year, so full of nuance and subtlety. St. Vincent's command of the music and her lyrical conceits is breathtaking and exciting. Each listen reveals more and more to the listener. What seems to be a throwaway phrase or slight melody, shows itself to be a linchpin of the entire song. Rarely have I been this enraptured by a new CD, and this one is definitely going to find itself in my top ten for the year. Actor is essential listening for those that enjoy challenging music.