St. Vincent: All Born Screaming [TOTAL PLEASURE]

Why you'll love it

All Born Screaming won three Grammys, including Best Alternative Music Album, plus Best Rock Song for "Broken Man" and Best Alternative Music Performance for "Flea." It is the first St. Vincent album produced entirely by Annie Clark herself.

About the album

Annie Clark started on this one the moment Daddy's Home came out, and the first thing she made was hours of esoteric post-industrial dance music on drum machines and modular synths. She called the eventual record post-plague pop and compared making it to taking the long walk into the woods alone, and it sounds exactly that intense.

She brought in a crack team: Dave Grohl and Josh Freese on drums, Cate Le Bon, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Rachel Eckroth and Mark Guiliana, with Cian Riordan mixing. "Broken Man" is menacing, industrial rock, "Flea" bites hard, and "Big Time Nothing" struts. "Hell Is Near" and "Sweetest Fruit" show her softer, stranger side, "Violent Times" goes widescreen, and Cate Le Bon co-writes and sings on the closing title track. "So Many Planets" and "The Power's Out" add a little cosmic drift between the blasts.

In the "Broken Man" video, directed by Alex Da Corte, she bursts into flames, and the same image became the cover. She later re-recorded the whole thing in Spanish as Todos Nacen Gritando, which is the sort of thing you do when one Grammy-winning album simply isn't enough paperwork.

Also at Kops: more St. Vincent on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Total Pleasure, the 2024 album.