Hi, everyone. Toothony Pickctano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new St. Vincent album, All Born Screaming.

Okay, here we have a brand new LP from the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Ms. Annie Clarke, A.K.A. St. Vincent. Her seventh studio album, which comes just a few years after 2021's Daddy's Home, which did leave some fans bewildered. But personally, I felt this record was truly a career highlight. Maybe it wasn't as whimsical as records that made Annie a darling of the indie scene-like actor, and maybe it wasn't as instantly catchy and direct as her art pop and rock breakout Strange Mercy. But Annie has always been an artist who's defied expectations and has never run the same play twice, which is what makes her such a standout artist.

That and her bold vocal delivery, her undeniable killer guitar chops and her command of melody. Even when she goes in a direction that some of her fans may not be crazy about, you still have to respect it. For example, maybe the fried production, jagged grooves and super distorted guitars on the self-titled St. Vincent record weren't for you, but maybe the electronics and dance music nods and dramatic ballads on mass seduction were. Personally, though, I got a lot out of the progressive, psychedelic, lush instrumentals and experimental songs all over Daddy's Home, and the lyrics that tied into Annie's past struggles, especially those in relation to her father and family, were just the cherry on top. It's a record that I often find myself going back to and peeling away more layers as I listen to it, and I hoped for that at the very least when going into All Born Screaming.

However, after spinning it multiple times, I'm not sure if this is an LP I'm going to see myself coming back to again anytime soon. And that's despite the excitement I had going into this album off of singles like "Broken Man," which I think is one of Annie's most explosive and thrilling songs ever. Rock Saint Vincent is fully back, but the track is also a really effective marriage of the guitar heroism that we love Annie for, those passion and fiery vocals, as well as some of the electronics and beats that she's been flirting with as of late.

"Flea" was also a very solid teaser for this record, and stylistically, a surprise because the track is very Tool-esque. I mean, maybe not too much of a surprise because it's no secret that Annie enjoys herself some Tool. And the grooves and riffs on this track are very "Stink Fist." They're heavy and psychedelic and proggy, but without quite stepping over that metal border. This track also features one of Annie's best and most flavorful guitar solo passages ever, too. It's heavily altered and arranged, not exactly a super raw, wild performance or anything like that, but it's very creative and surreal and detailed. Definitely not your average bridge. And then lyrically, this track adds as well to a greater theme on the record, dealing in destructive and parasitic relationships being embedded into someone so deeply that you've pretty much taken over their life in a way, really when they least expect it.

Then the third taste of this record came in the form of "Big Time Nothing," which harps on a theme that Annie has addressed multiple times over the course of her career, and that is fame and the fakeness and artifice that often comes with it. On this track, Annie gives us more sequenced drum loops, more synths, and this vocal delivery that's a mix of talking, rapping, singing. It's eccentric, flamboyant, serving on some level as well. The track is also very David Byrne and Talking Heads inspired, which is an influence I hold a lot of favor for, but I still think the song does fall short a little it on a structural level as it's various bold and very odd and somewhat sour parts don't meld together all that well, even if the lyrical and conceptual focus is there. So yeah, this is a pretty wild handful of songs to derive any forecast for an album over. And honestly, these tracks don't even begin to encapsulate just how sprawling and varied some of the influences in this tracklist are.

Coming away from this record, I can really tell Annie produced this thing herself, not because of the quality of the mixes or anything like that, because overall, the record does actually sound great. It's really more the fact that for better or for worse, Annie sounds totally uninhibited on project and is just flailing wildly from vibe to vibe, from influence to influence, regardless of whether or not it's being executed well, plays to her strengths, or even fits in esthetically with the rest of the album.

Another thing about the LP that I'll say is that it has a bit of a slow start with "Hell is Near," which features this very chilly vocal intro that sounds almost like a performance I'm hearing in a cathedral. There are also lots of ghostly ambient tones, swelling and falling in the background. And this eventually gives way to these swirling guitar arpeggios that are reminiscent of a System of a Down's "Aerials," something along those lines. And while the structure doesn't exactly give way to a big finish or anything like that, the song's lyrics about there being a beginning or a starting point ahead, as well as having to give it all away because the whole world is watching. These words give us a sense of some of the feelings that are going to be informing the rest of the record and where exactly it's moving. I think this song could have been a decent tone setter for the LP if we escalated from here.

But the next track on the album, "Reckless," extends this very low-key introduction, as this track is a very dour motif with some grim piano cords, pained lead vocals, too, it escalates in layers and emotional intensity, but the payoff isn't maybe as gratifying as I hoped it would be because the odd synthesized bleeps and bloops, the groaning guitars, and basic kick and snare patterns that bring us to this point. While it's a lot of sound, it's not exactly coalescing all that well into anything bigger than the sum of its parts. But at least on this track, we do get more lyrical nods to this idea of someone being a part of your life in such a way to where they're almost a part of you.

Past this point, though, things on the record ramp up momentum-wise pretty quickly with the lead singles. But then deeper into the record, we really wade further into the weeds with "Violent Times," which is a track that brings a lot of pomp, big presentation presentation, especially with those honking massive horn sections. It sounds almost like Annie is auditioning to pen the next 007 theme, something along those lines. And while I think the main theme melody of the track works, and I think the instrumental it is certainly ambitious, the song at the core of it all, especially melody-wise, tends to trail off after a while, and it doesn't really develop further in a way where I think something this huge needs to. Still, the track's lyrics do bring this this terrifying reality, this 'come to Jesus' moment where you realize somebody wasn't quite who you thought they were. And while I wish the song had more details in it along these lines, it still contributes to an overall picture that is being painted across the album. The power cores out, though, I thought was a pretty major highlight on the record. It is a string-kissed slow burner that really seals the deal. Very Bowie-esque, especially when you get these huge, honking, buzzing bass lines and melodies toward the back end of the track. The spotlet vocals and the melodies of the track are great, and I love the apocalyptic surreal imagery that's being framed throughout the song.

The album does have a really strong middle section for the most part, but the ending, in my opinion, a bit of a mess, as I'm not huge on "Sweetest Fruit," to be honest. It goes beyond the lyrics of the track, which some have found to be a little tasteless, and Annie has been open about this in interviews. She is most certainly attempting to deliver a bit of a tribute to the late and great producer Sophie, singing,

"My Sophie climbed the roof to get a better view of the moon / My God, then one wrong stare took her down to the depths / But for a minute, what a view,"

which I'm sure Annie's at a distance admiration for Sophie's work and legacy is real and is true. It just reads as very pithy and reductive when obviously it's trying be poetic and in honor of somebody. But really, this is the least of the tracks problems because instrumentally, I feel like this has to be one of my least favorite pieces of production on any St. Vincent album because the detuned repetitive synth cords, the groaning guitars underneath it all, the sour vocal harmonies and vaguely exotic beat, just make for a very, very unflattering combo, I'll say that, which is also an issue on the following track, "So Many Planets."

A surprise reggae song, which there's nothing wrong with in concept, but obviously because it's St. Vincent, she's going to flip this sound in some way, creatively, to make it feel aligned to her tastes and esthetics. And her way of doing that is to basically cover these reggae grooves in spooky production and eventually slather them in these ScoobyDoo-chase lead guitar licks on the solo section. And this track is also another moment on the record where toward the end, we're getting a lot of layers, a lot of action, but it's not exactly culminating all that well or all moving in unison in a direction. Thankfully, though, things do pick up with the title track, which is a cinematic credits roll moment for the record. There are some interesting dynamics and changes to be had on this song as well. One Minute, you're getting some very slick, funky guitar pop, and progressively, the tension, the longing, the repression that Annie is singing about in the lyrics becomes more and more difficult to ignore. And eventually, it hits a peak with lyrics like, "I was a pantomime of a modern girl / Those were the days and I was miserable / A karaoke version of Leonard's 'Hallelujah' / My whole damn life I had never exhaled," which is honestly one of the most telling couplets of her entire career.

From this point, we get another chorus, a a very eerie ambient passage that eventually goes to full silence. Then what comes through that is these heartbeat-like kick drums, droning tones, cultish vocal harmonies. This is it. This is the screaming of the album. On some level, it's a cry for help, but I'm not even fully sure of what it's crying for outside of these vague notions around desiring more freedom, less control. Annie getting headaches from or just generally being uninterested in hallowed halls. It describes things like arms as resulting in sensations of being wrapped up in a strait jacket. It's almost fearing connection, maybe based upon very negative past experiences with it, and these feelings are so intense and overwhelming. I feel like we're not fully exploring them. We're just merely stopping at this very intense desire for all of it to stop and for all of it to go away.

Overall, I will say this album has some great highlights on it. It is a very free wheeling and exciting album for Annie in her catalog. It is a daring album. It's a record that throws quite a few surprises at you. But simultaneously, it's not nearly as disciplined as I think Annie has proven herself to be in her best moments so far in her discography, which I think has led to some of these tracks, thematically and structurally, not bringing a lot in terms of follow-through.

If I could throw a metaphor out there and liken this record to garden. I think there are some moments where Annie really lets the weeds grow in a bit, and they really could have been cut out, thrown out in favor of some material that I think could have been a lot stronger, which is why I'm feeling a strong 5 to a light 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantana, St. Vincent, forever.