On the surface, St. Vincent’s new album, Daddy’s Home, is wrapped in early 70s nostalgia, evoking the sounds of Sly Stone, Pink Floyd, and Bowie, among others. St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, saw to it that the everything from the sound, songwriting, marketing, and videos were steeped in the early 70s. The angular, warped noise-pop of recent albums are traded in for warm, soft chord vamps that hug slinky bass lines. The album is more than just an homage, however, and framing it deep in the early 70s speaks volume to the whole album’s conceptual arch and interpretation. 

Clark’s new persona for the project, Candy Darling, was an actress who was part of Andy Warhol’s inner circle in the early 70s before passing away in 1974, becoming a transgender icon since. Clark pays homage to her in the short track, “Candy Darling,” where Candy is “wavin’ from the latest uptown train,” which eludes to Candy’s symbolic train rides from her home in Long Island to Manhattan. Clark intertwines Darling’s journey with her own experiences in the shuffling funk of “Down and Out Downtown” singing, “Last night’s heels/On the mornin’ train/It’s a long way back downtown.” Clark herself as been both forthright and ambiguous about the album’s meaning. While it is obvious that the title track refers to her dad’s release from federal prison for tax scheme, Clark has teased us with asking who really is this Daddy? 

The early 70s also saw the second wave of the feminist movement rapidly challenging societal expectations of women with a host of court victories that brought among others, the legalization of birth control for unmarried women and abortion. On the lead single, “Melting of the Sun,” which sounds as if Bowie is singing over Bill Wither’s band, the lyrics read as a thank you to inspiring women before her, from Nina Simone to Tori Amos, who were brave enough to challenge, or melt, the seemingly unmovable power structure of the patriarchy, symbolized by the sun. 

The depth of the inconclusive and dubious nature of each song is what makes the whole album so rewarding and further establishes St. Vincent as one of our strongest songwriters. 

*Originally published in Content Magazine

(Loma Vista)

Release Date: May 14th, 2021