With only two and a half weeks until the release of her new album Strange Mercy, St. Vincent gives us a further glance into the new album and her psyche with the video for "Cruel". In it, St. Vincent is just a regular gas station customer who encounters a little girl in a wheelchair. Any "aw"-inspiring cuteness is destroyed when you realize it's all just a ploy to distract Annie Clark so she can be abducted. A sack thrown over her head, Clark is brought to a random house and forced to be their mother figure. However, in true St. Vincent fashion all is not sunshine and daisies. Clark is forced to suffer indignation after indignation as the kids torment her in a variety of ways (the most jarring of which is holding her head underwater while she bathes) and proves to be quite the bad homemaker. Deciding to cut it's loses, the family then buries Clark alive and goes about its business.
Annie Clark's videos have always been artfully cinematic and kind of dark but this one takes it to a new level. Add in Clark's little wink-wink nudge-nudge moment of comic relief as she plays the guitar in the trunk of the car while tied up with a sack over her head and you have a very enjoyable video. The track itself, with it's jazzy saxophone and it's big drum beats is swaggeringly sexy despite lyrics about desertion and abandonment after use.
Strange Mercy is out September 13th.
A music blog dedicated to my ever-expanding tastes. A musical journey with endless pitstops along the way. Bringing you the best of what I see and hear.
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