St. Vincent has penned a new essay for her fan newsletter, reflecting on the making of her second studio album Actor, which recently turned 10.
As the story goes, Annie Clark had done recording sessions with a producer (who remains nameless) before eventually linking up with John Congleton (who she calls “Johnny C.”) for what would eventually become Actor. In the essay, she likens the first producer to an “abusive father figure” and calls him an “idealist-cum-emotional-fascist.”
“I was lost. I had all kinds of words and melodies but was so beaten up by the other process that I didn’t know how to tie them with these pristine moments,” she wrote. “[Congleton] told me to go home and write a song in a night. So I wrote ‘Actor Out of Work’ at my mom’s house in my childhood bedroom. I felt like a fraud. I felt like people were frauds. I wanted to be hit. I wanted to hit.”
Clark goes on to describe the process behind her collaboration with Congleton as they crafted and reworked the songs that ended up on Actor, which included “painstaking” piano recording (on “The Party”) and lots of conversations: “Lots of Hunky’s veggie burgers and Subway sandwiches and talking. Talking sincere. Talking shit. Making each other laugh with stories about growing up. About Texas. About growing up in Texas,” she wrote.
Clark closes: “I haven’t listened to that record in a while. I have always likened listening to older work to looking at junior high year book photos… Recognize that time is elastic. Notes are elastic. Lyrics elastic. Could have been anything. Any songs, any ideas at all, anyone at that time. But it was those songs and those ideas and that process and that person. And I am (humbly) proud of it. And so happy that Actor made it to the ears and hearts it did.” Read the full essay here.
https://pitchfork.com/news/st-vincent-reflects-on-actor-10-years-later-i-am-humbly-proud-of-it
