“I felt I had gone as far as I could possibly go with angularity,” Clark said when announcing Daddy’s Home. Instead, she dug back into the records of her youth: Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Bowie. Daddy’s Home was positioned as a warmer, more lived-in collection steeped in the big comedown of the ‘70s and specifically the sleazy, druggy glamor of ‘70s New York.
I feel that the sound and setting of this album requires a particular setting. I liked Spencer Kornhaber’s point about a ‘bar perfumed by cigarette smoke’:
Daddy’s Home, upon first listen, seems like it might impress her critics. St. Vincent has undertaken a dramatic sonic reinvention that emphasizes, in her words, “looseness and groove.” The palette is early-’70s rock and soul: the boogying synths of Stevie Wonder, the spacey noodling of Pink Floyd, the rhythmic urgency of War, the haughty haze of the Velvet Underground. Though the producer Jack Antonoff worked with St. Vincent on her 2017 album, Masseduction, his linkup with her now more recalls the finely detailed nostalgia trips he’s undertaken with Lana Del Rey. Some Daddy’s Home songs are physically nauseating in the same fun way that Parliament-Funkadelic can be. Many are full-band workouts begging to be performed in a bar whose carpeting is perfumed with cigarette smoke.
This album just makes me want to go back and listen to St. Vincent’s back catalogue all over again and appreciated the sounds and exploration.
Place next to Lana Del Ray
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