St. Vincent on producing her new album: “On some level I’m a God playing with lightning”

St. Vincent has spoken about the experience of producing her upcoming album ‘All Born Screaming’, saying that it made her feel like “a God”. 

The artist was appearing on Matt Wilkinson’s show on the Apple Music 1 radio station, ahead of the album’s release next month. 

In February, St. Vincent made her return with the “gnarly” comeback single ‘Broken Man’ and confirmed that her new album ‘All Born Screaming’ will be out on April 26. 

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has produced the album alone, the first time she has done so, having previously co-produced 2018’s ‘Masseduction’ and 2021’s ‘Daddy’s Home’. 

“You go crazy because you have these sounds in your head that you have to render,” she explained. “You have to get them out and only you know when it’s correct and only you know when it’s done and there’s nobody who’s going to go like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s good. That was good enough.’” 

“When you’re in the room alone, you’re making sure that you get to the guttural essence of something and only you know…when it’s quite exactly right.” 

“On some level I’m a God playing with lightning and I’m harnessing chaos and I’m turning oscillators and I’m turning knobs and I’m doing all this,” she continued. “And then hours and hours of jamming and jamming it. Maybe there were psychedelics involved. It doesn’t matter, who’s asking?” 

“But then going, ‘Okay, I jammed for that many hours. What’s the four seconds that’s so exciting to me that I want to hear it over and over again and build a whole song around it?’ So that was one part of the process, and so it’s a bit tedious. It’s a little bit ass backwards, but that’s what I needed.” 

Speaking to NME about the mood of the album, Clark described it as the “sound of the inside of my head”, adding: ““For me, the record is black, white and all the colours in the fire, because it’s about life and death. Life and death is pretty binary – you’re alive or you’re dead. The record’s about what is to be alive and to embrace that agony and ecstasy.” 

She went on to share further details about the record while talking to NME from the red carpet at the BRIT Awards, where she also presented The Last Dinner Party with their Rising Star Award. 

Clark said: “It’s a heavier record [than before]. I think it’s black and white and all the colours in a fire – that’s what it sounds like to me.” 

“I had Dave Grohl play drums, I had Josh Freese [Devo, A Perfect Circle, Foo Fighters] on drums, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Mark Guiliana. I worked with my very good friend Cate Le Bon, who is one of my favourite artists ever and a great producer in her own right [too],” she added. “So I just feel lucky to get to work with my friends”. 

She has also confirmed that one song on the album, ‘Sweetest Fruit’, was inspired by reading about the circumstances of the late producer SOPHIE’s untimely death. 

“The internet twists things, and I don’t want it to be seen like I’m trying to capitalise on somebody’s death,” she explained. “I was an admirer from afar, we never met, but I read about the way that she fell because she was trying to get a better look at the moon, which was just the most beautiful, poetic thing I’ve ever heard.” 

She went on to explain that the song in question is about “people trying for transcendence, and at least they were taking a big swing or trying for something beautiful”. 

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