From the Archive: St. Vincent’s Seduction
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St. Vincent's new album, Just Out, is called Mass Seduction.
I asked her about the title track.
This is Toko Yasuda, who plays in my live band. I wanted her to pretend like she was an alien describing how to seduce someone, but in Japanese.
Why Japanese?
Because a couple of reasons. One, a totally self-serving one, which is that I love Japan and I want to be big in Japan so that I can go there all the time. I mean, I'm not above strategy.
Why did you decide to make this track the title track? In other words, how does it shape the whole of the album, the conception of the album, the themes of the album?
It's more or less kind of like a thesis. It's more or less, it contains all the characters that you meet on the album. It's... I thought of it like a graduate thesis or something.
A graduate thesis?
Yeah.
Well, how would you summarize it? What is the thesis? Because the album is just coming out. How would you describe it?
Um, I would say it's an exploration of power and the rosy sides of power, you know, and, and also the really the grim sides. I mean, the kinds of things that can have a total hold over you, be it, you know, drugs or sex or, um, Is it telling that those are the only two things I can think of? I know there's a third thing.
Sadness. I think he told Nick Poundgarden, who wrote a profile of you in the magazine, sex, drugs, and sadness. Sex, drugs, and sadness.
Now, has it been that kind of period for you in the last few years? It's been three years since you've had an album come out.
It was a wild three years. Yeah, a lot of life happened in those three years, for sure.
I also read a Nick's essay about you that you said that you've been living through while recording this album, which takes a lot longer than people would imagine, a life of kind of monastic aloneness, that your life was a Pilates class.
I love Pilates.
Maybe reading a book here and there, and then work, and then work.
Yeah. I just, I hit a point where I just needed everything but the most vital things for creativity to just go away.
Were you in trouble? Did you feel off balance?
Well, certainly off balance, yeah. Certainly off balance. I just needed to do sort of a radical reorganizing of my life in order to fulfill. This sounds really like a Tolkien thing or something, but in order to fulfill my destiny as a creative person, I needed to just clear a path.
Otherwise, what would happen?
You know, otherwise just depression would take its jaws and just swallow me completely.
That's where you were.
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