St Vincent embraces the flaws

SINGER INSPIRED BY INDUSTRY’S TRAILBLAZING WOMEN AND FAMILY’S PAST

Pop shapeshifter St Vincent is covered in paint splotches, her hair hidden under a headscarf, fresh from a session of resurfacing her deck.

The Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and guitar virtuoso could not look less like the blonde-bob bewigged, ’70s suit-wearing, strutting Candy Darling character who “stars” in the videos and photos for her sixth album, Daddy’s Home.

Candy Darling was an American actress famed for her roles in Andy Warhol films, and as a muse for the Velvet Underground, and was summoned back to life by St Vincent as both a song and her alter ego for the record.

The character is a perfect fit with St Vincent’s sonic shift to the early ’70s sound of David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone and downtown New York.

“The song Candy Darling is the last song I wrote for the record,” St Vincent says.

“Visually, I want everything to continue the story of the music, from the stock of paper I use for the vinyl insert, down to what I look like.

“I feel like clothes give you energy; I notice I move very differently in the different outfits.”

The record’s title directly reflects the album’s primary influence. St Vincent – known as Annie Clark to family and friends – drew some of her lyrical inspiration from the mental processing required after her father’s release from jail in 2019, after serving nine years for his involvement in a stock manipulation scheme. The artist wasn’t about to write an entire record of songs about family jail visits and life after incarceration. But flawed human characters have generally underpinned her musical stories.

“So many of the stories of this album are about complicated people – flawed people – doing their best to get by, sometimes succeeding but mostly failing,” St Vincent says.

I think the music palette is more warm. It’s like it’s a beat-up, leather armchair

“I was able to write about life with humour and compassion, and even extend some of that compassion to myself.

“There’s not a lot of judgment and I was very careful, any time I started to write from a point of view that felt blamey … I was ‘no, no, no’.”

St Vincent has created her own musical universe with each of her records, veering wildly from indie rock to polished pop.

Her awe-inspiring musical talent has inspired artists from David Byrne to Dua Lipa to seek her out for collaboration, and she recently help produce, co-write and play on Julia Stone’s solo record, Sixty Summers.

St Vincent’s producer partner on the record is again American hitmaker Jack Antonoff, who helped her craft the warm ’70s sound of

Daddy’s Home. “I think the music palette is more warm. It’s like it’s a beat-up leather armchair. It’s like, ‘Hey, come sit down – let’s have a smoke and drink and laugh about it all’ kind of feeling, which is a very different feeling for me, and a feeling I’m very glad to have.”

One of the album’s standout tracks, The Melting of the Sun, also pays tribute to the women who have inspired her – from Joni Mitchell to Marilyn Monroe – with their courage when the world sought to silence them.

She calls it a love letter to “strong, brilliant female artists”.

“Each of them survived in an environment that was in a lot of ways hostile to them,” the singer says.

St Vincent endured her own “melting” moment in the harsh glare of the spotlight.

She hit the headlines in 2016 when she dated supermodel Cara Delevingne.

“I wanted to say thank you to these female artists who have given me so much; their work is very deep,” St Vincent says.

“In the song I call her Jane but

I’m thinking of Joan Didion and

Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos and Nina Simone.

“Nina Simone was chastised for joining the civil rights movement and becoming a voice for black power and she wasn’t taken seriously as a piano player, even though she was a great piano player.

“Tori Amos talked about sexual assault long before it was taken seriously in the mainstream.

“And I don’t mean to couch their stories as them being victims of society – that’s an aspect but not the main part of their lives.

“But I want to say thank you for your art and being as strong as you were to withstand a lot of the shit that got thrown at you, and you made my life easier as an artist and I hope I don’t let down the legacy – all of that.”