Described as a masochistic process Annie Clarkknown by the artist’s pseudonym Saint Vincentthe recordings of their seventh album “All Born Screaming”. The 41-year-old American has once again created a fantastic work that combines art pop and industrial, borrows from Kate Bush and Jimi Hendrix, Nine Inch Nails and Peter Gabriel, and yet still creates her own sound world that gets deep under the skin .
“I said the thing about the masochistic process half in jest, but also half seriously,” she says in the KURIER interview. “Because I produced this album completely by myself. There was no other way because I wanted to bring out the sounds that I had in my head. And that involves me singing a song 100 times until I’m happy with it. And because I’m a good girl, I would never put a producer or an engineer through having to hear that.”
The fact that Clark spent almost two years searching for these sounds for “All Born Screaming”, spending nights turning the knobs of modular synthesizers, adding demonic effects to her electric guitar or building up pulsating rhythms, is also due to the subject matter. “I have had to cope with the loss of loved ones in recent years,” she says. “I dealt with death, with life and with violence. Luckily I have music where I can unload all these feelings. But death also has something clarifying. Because suddenly you can say: ‘This is important and this is not important!'”
She doesn’t want to go into the exact origin of songs like “Violent Times”, “Hell Is Near” or the title track “All Born Screaming” in order to leave the listeners the freedom for their own interpretations. But Clark believes these stories of deeply personal experiences have universal relevance.
“It’s about deep emotions, feelings like the pain when a loved one is no longer there, about depression and self-hatred. And these are things that everyone goes through at some point. Because that’s life. Life is suffering. We suffer to the same extent that we love. But at the end of the day, love and people we love are the only thing that matters. That’s why the general mood of the album is this urgency: Let’s live this love and do this now, because life is short and the clock is ticking – for each of us.
Although Clark often worked with synthesizers on All Born Screaming, she is also an accomplished guitarist. For many years she has been playing an electric guitar that she designed herself and which is now being mass-produced. “That was great, because many signature guitars from other musicians are just modifications of common models, for example with different pickups. We completely redesigned the St. Vincent guitar and gave it a completely new shape.”
Clark is even more pleased that “Cruel Summer,” a song she wrote with Taylor Swift, became a huge hit last year after Swift included it on her tour.
“It shows the power that fans have. They took this old song from 2019 that was never a single or a hit and said, no, we like it, and put it on the charts through social media. I’ve never experienced anything like that – especially not as a participant.”
