Paradise Found
St. Vincent
Actor
(4AD)
****
St. Vincent’s sophomore album Actor (following 2007’s Marry Me) sounds the way you’d expect the music in heaven to sound — if every cloud in heaven were occupied by a romantic castaway newly filled with charming optimism. With an impressive repertoire of instruments adorning every song and blessed with Annie Clark’s chillingly angelic voice, Actor has an insanely friendly sound that evokes the kind of happiness you ordinarily can only dream about — not unlike Clark’s former band, The Polyphonic Spree. At the same time, all the starry-eyed choral singing and blissful harp-plucks on the album’s opener, “The Stranger,” have a creepy undercurrent as Clark sings “What do I share? What do I keep from all the strangers who sleep where I sleep?” Throughout Actor, Clark sings from the perspective of a young woman who has somehow managed to have been repeatedly disappointed by love with a great portion of her hopefulness having miraculously remained intact. This is a remarkably lovely album, made even more outstanding by the contrast with Clark’s suspiciously dark words. CURTIS WRIGHT
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