Annie Clark is back with her fourth studio album, the self-titled St. Vincent, perhaps the most forceful validation to date of her virtuosic musicianship and unyielding inventiveness as a songwriter. With the new record she continues to purvey her idiosyncratic brand of indie pop, replete with the raw guitar playing and flirtations with dissonance that characterize her sound.
“Digital Witness” is the second single from the album, following “Birth in Reverse.” The video appears to take place in some alternate reality, perhaps the digital one referenced by the song as the reality we spend most of our time mentally inhabiting. St. Vincent’s interpretation of our mental cyberworld looks like a melding of an absurdist future with a Cold War-era Soviet Union: sleek minimalist design combined with cold, utilitarian industry. Seemingly digitized humans move in a way that can’t help but recall the choreographed shows Clark and David Byrne put on in support of their 2012 collaboration Love This Giant. The funky horns section that carries “Digital Witness” provides another nod to their album, which featured a backing band using only brass instrumentation.
Even in a world where social media commands an obsessive level of our attention, St. Vincent does a pretty damn good job of getting “all of our mind” on this one, which is why she might really be the reigning queen of dark indie pop, as the cover of her latest album suggests. Watch below.
St. Vincent is out on Loma Vista/Republic now. Read our review of it here.
