St. Vincent

Actor couldn't be a more fitting title for the soft-spoken Annie Clark to spread her histrionic wings. The follow-up to her acclaimed debut is like a Disney soundtrack for the GarageBand age -- gorgeous baroque pop fit for a queen, with layers of pulsing synths, echoing harmonies, swelling strings and distorted guitars. But like an angel stuck with duties in purgatory, Clark's celestial croons utter some fairly unsettling words ("H-E-L-P/ Help me!"). So forget Disney; here's a fairytale score for the realists, for those who prefer the beauty in adversity, not the happily ever after.

The 26-year-old Brooklyn singer-songwriter Annie Clark, the former Polyphonic Spree
guitarist who records as St. Vincent, is a sly one: The deception begins with her looks —
little-girl-lost doe eyes peering out beneath curly coiffure — and extends to the tuneful,
precise pop songs that she sings in a breathy near-whisper. But beneath the plushness of
her terrific second album there are drolleries, black humor, a cosmopolitan's ja... More >