The intro track of synth and distortion. Brings you right into where we are going. The runway to the rest of the work. An almost faded voice claiming “You and me/we’re not meant for this world” truly introduces the general thesis of:

The Future.

That it’s coming. That it’s gone. Strings and big church bells to crescendo in a subversion of the futuristic synth, signaling in ways that we ourselves are time. As we are the past and will be the future.

A fun subversion again. Leading us straight into the energy the album holds. This is the first track of the album that I believe is truly ahead of its time. (The whole thing is ahead of its time, it was 2017) This is where we finally get the guitar we’ve been waiting for. The distortion is more present than ever. Pills being where are society has been going toward, who knows what was going on in the writer’s life at the time, but it’s all pills all the time isn’t it?

When suddenly we are met with a lament, begging:

“Come all you wasting, wretched, and scorned
Come watch me standin’ under the wall
Come all you children, come out to play
Everyone you love will all go away“

Backed by distorted, funky saxophone, melding into the lonely sound of guitar and synth, echoing out to those we hope are listening.

The name of the album. Should be exciting, right? Well, it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The next song on the album, ahead of it’s time. That vocal affect and God, that guitar sings, sails, wails, with grit and of course…Sex.

It’s truly in the lyrics, synthesizer sound choice, and those indescribable, irreplicable, totally unique grooves, stuck in deep caverns of funk, borderline psychedelic in some ways.

Ending on Mass Destruction, because Sex, like anything else human, is a weapon.

Another song from the future. High energy, like some aerobics class from another planet.

“I am a lot like you (boys)
I am alone like you (girls)“

The crux of the song. Pushing the ideas of “We’re not so different, you and I”

The instrumental break just before the end of the song is another piece of evidence for the aerobics class from another planet, and a push in the song’s energy. As the track quite literally winds down, it almost feels like that dancing scene from The Breakfast Club. We spent all that time dancing our hearts out to crash and collapse, totally exhausted from the energy we spent. (With Spaceships landing in the background to boot.)

You know, the only way I’ve been able to describe this track is in one word.

Addicting

The beat that’s laid down, the crashes. The images built in every verse, and the chorus speaks to a cocky addiction. That addiction, given an almost theatrical dramatic pause in the well-established beat and a semi-sour melody someone is playing on the keys in the back. This song hits every spot you want just right. The down-beat LOWS and sleigh bell-like upbeat. With the groove rocking back and forth between the two.

Man, those guitar breaks NEVER get old.

Again, the song ends in the contrast of it all. Strings with the words “…It comes out a Lament” or “…It comes out all sick” hitting that little spot in your heart that twangs sometimes.

(Oh yeah…This song is from the future. Did you listen to it? Did you hear that specific distortion and synth sound?)

A standout. Especially at this point in the album.

We’ve hit High after High, and this is our first real breath from under the water. A simple piano, a story told in a ballad, and that twang inside you personified not only in the lyrics, but in the synth’s passive, almost country-like loom around the people within it.

It makes you ask questions, like Who, Why, Where, and What. But isn’t that the point? Don’t we all have a Johnny in our life whom we’d like to see maybe just once more, even if it was all a bunch of shit before? Just to see they aren’t living on the street still.

Something interesting happens here that shines even more light into the heartache: she references herself. She says her own name in this story. It gets closer. Almost too close, like we shouldn’t have seen it, as if we’ve seen a neighbor welcome family home from a trip in their driveway, or overheard an argument while walking by someone on the phone.

Maybe we wish we had said happy birthday. Maybe we’ll always wonder what could have been. The future is uncertain here.

Savior brings us back to where we were in a semi cocky groove of confident seduction (For the names’ sake)

We get our funk back. Touching some psychedelic rock again, and we keep those world-building lyrics that take us through the dynamic of sex and obsession.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the song is the end. Again, it ends repeating quietly,

“I got ’em tryn’ to save the world/ They said, “girl you’re not Jesus”/They call me a strange girl and they speak to me in bruises“

Another subversion of the discussion. We are still begging like the rest of the song, but we’re begging for different reasons now. It is this change in the subject of what we are begging for that subverts the whole song.

(Again, I ask, what year was this made? Do you hear that weird, funky, groovy waka pulse throughout? Seriously.)

Famously, this song, in short, is said to be about David Bowie’s passing in 2016. While that is certainly a part of it, that’s not all.

As we are now well aware, St. Vincent’s songs speak to many. They speak to many walks of life, to many subjects, they grow and change as they develop, and most of all, they tell a story.

This song speaks to our grief. All of us. It speaks to our lonely walks, down cold or hot streets. Our phone calls that go to voicemail. The cups of coffee we never finished, the gift cards we forgot to use. The childhood homes burnt down, the true and honest grief that comes with life.

Again, we are told the story of our humanity, in this contrast from the seduction or provocation earlier. Yet still, and in its own way, this is all an avenue for us to love ourselves and our humanity. It almost seduces us into this natural aspect of life:

Grief

“I have lost a hero, I have lost a friend/But for you darling, I’d do it all again“

The upset of longing in loss. It isn’t easy, but in the same way that we hope for Johnny on his birthday, we hope and allow those feelings in ourselves.

FEAR THE FUTURE.

This is where we get to address MY thesis of this album. Firstly, I would like to remind everyone in the room that this album was released in 2017. OH boy, here we are. We’ve U-turned from our last track and are running on to the next quick. (So maybe we’ll forget how sad we are.)

Driving and booming. Let’s push to the future we are afraid of. Not just push, let’s run, sprint, punch, fight, kick and scream into it.

“Come on, sir/Just give me the answer” I need to know the future. Begging again to know the unknown.

Accompanied by this God holding a guitar. The spaceships are landing and taking off. The guitar in a Boston way is echoing this extraterrestrial build. We are back in space aerobics class.

We know where we’ve been, I fear where we are going, but “I’ll run for you.”

What I see when I hear this song is a nightclub, thumping and hot, with my feet sticking to the ground while I am trying to get to the other side of the bar. This isn’t something I’ve done before. This is the first time I’m tripping over myself to get where I’m going among endless moving bodies. What exactly is on the end of my journey?

That young lover. The young thing I am, the young thing they are. The newness of the mistakes I’ve yet to make. Finally making it to that young lover I’ve missed, and that is a mistake I am about to make.

And again, we are told the story of this young lover. Addicted to someone and those things that keep people on the street.

“Oh, but these pills, I can’t even pronounce them“

“Young lover, begging you please to wake up/ Young Lover, I wish that I was your drug/ Young lover I miss the taste of your tongue/ Young Lover. I wish your love was enough, enough, enough“

“Wake up, young lover, I thought you were dying“

While I imagine this exact place that we have all been, this song not only takes us back there to that spot, but it is that heart-sick reminiscing towards your young lover. Who knows where they are now?

The finish of this song is another testament to St. Vincent’s talent in her vocals and the musical skill that can not be denied. (Just in case you forgot the power house we are dealing with, here’s your not-so-subtle reminder.) (OH and DON’T forget those spaceships)

The interlude that leads our ear to know the melody of the ghosts we dance with.

We are quiet again, with the strings we’ve heard before, the now common heartsick that comes with life well known. This song is quick, but it weighs just as much as every other track.

The melody of Dancing With a Ghost is guiding us through the track. Embodying the idea or image of letting go of the hand you were holding.

This line, now echoing “Don’t it beat a slow dance to death?” evokes something specific. Specific in that maybe dancing with a ghost is better than dancing to your death alone. Maybe it speaks to the concept: Would you rather have loved and lost or never loved at all? A question only answered within you quietly, the truth never to be shared in its entirety.

The last track. It brings the edge back. We’re in self-destruct mode. It’s over.

We’ve lived life, in every context, through losing friends, losing family, losing self.

Through finding friends, making family, and finding self.

On top of a roof ready to end it all, as life and all its seductions have become a suffocating undertow, pulling us under waves and waves. Letting life happen to us, helpless to it all. After consuming it all greedily.

Cut with that great distortion (ahead of its time!!), instrumental and vocal, we know it’s serious, almost procession-like. Steady and pacing, building the distortion and beat as we go.

Hope is found at last in the question

“What could be better than love, than love, than love?“

—–It’s not the end.