St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION
Critic Score
Based on 47 reviews
2017 Ratings: #12 / 940
Year End Rank: #4
User Score
2017 Rank: #112
Liked by 284 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Evening Standard
The Oklahoman multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, is anything but a straightforward proposition, and the 13 songs on her fifth album teeter between absurdity and allure, seduction and repulsion, as they refract warped power dynamics and strange desires.
100
musicOMH

MASSEDUCTION is a remarkable record, a certain contender for album of the year and demonstrable proof that Clark is an artist working at the height of her powers.

100
AllMusic

Masseduction delivers sketches of chaos with stunning clarity. It's the work of an always savvy artist at her wittiest and saddest.

100
Gigwise

Masseduction is a work of genius light years ahead of its indie, rock and pop counterparts. St Vincent’s unashamed move into pop is a Bowie-like masterstroke with hit after hit emerging: teaming up with Bleacher’s frontman and Lorde producer Jack Antanoff has proven a powerful move.

100
A.V. Club

Clark creates her own internal logic, ensuring each record inhabits a unique, Narnia-like universe. Masseduction is no different; in fact, this latest record is Clark’s best, most cohesive musical statement yet.

100
Dork
As wider horizons open, Clark has grasped her opportunity with both hands. There’s no sign of hanging on for dear life, either. She’s in complete control at all times.
100
Pretty Much Amazing

MASSEDUCTION joins Grimes’ Art Angels and Lorde’s Melodrama as the inverse of a traditional pop album, one that undercuts the very genre it lifts. St. Vincent has consolidated, digested, and now transcended her former styles. What’s left is an artist reframing the landscape, a reverse-chameleon who can’t camouflage, but transforms the world around her instead.

100
DIY
As eyebrow-raisingly absurd as the current state of the world - and dissecting the darkest of melancholy in the same step - ‘MASSEDUCTION’ is a lesson in black humour. Along with the equally exceptional ‘St Vincent’ which came before it, this is the moment that St Vincent enters the fabled realm reserved for the greats.
100
The Skinny
It’s the most honest record we've heard from Clark yet, baring her soul more than she ever has before.
95
The Line of Best Fit

Ultimately, MASSEDUCTION defies explanation and critique, rendering the critic a dead weight in the dust of its ever-accelerating sucker-punch of ideas.

91
Consequence of Sound

Yes, MASSEDUCTION is worthy of being treated like an event, but whether or not it tops her previous two excellent efforts is a little tougher to support.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Five studio albums in, it feels more like another new beginning, and pretty close to a masterpiece.
90
Drowned in Sound
It’s a genuine masterpiece: complex, funny, sexy, bleak, uplifting, inspiring and enthralling from start to finish.
90
Albumism
The vast range of poetic emotion and masterful musical accompaniment is what makes St. Vincent her own star, not simply a planet in the orbit of Bowie and her predecessors.
90
The Young Folks
Above all, it’s fun. Fun in a way that romances are “fun,” in that they get you excited, a little crazy and inevitably there’s a sad or regretful comedown. Clark covers all of those bases, with experiments here in pop, guitar-shredding rock, and heartfelt ballads.
90
God Is in the TV
Everything feels bigger and more pronounced, making this her most eclectic and exciting record to date.
87
Paste

On MASSEDUCTION, Clark remains as unpredictable as ever, though there’s one thing fans will have gotten right: so far, at least, Annie Clark has proven incapable of writing anything less than a knockout pop song.

85
Under the Radar

MASSEDUCTION has set the bar high for the rest of the indie rock universe and proves that St. Vincent is a truly unique talent that is both innovative and entertaining.

80
NOW Magazine
It’s not out of bounds to call it the most personal St. Vincent album. Clark herself said, “if you want to know about my life, listen to this record.” But in recent memory, few musicians have also managed to so incisively capture what it’s like to live in this present.
80
NME

Annie Clark gets personal on a clutch of tales about power and lust.

80
The Sydney Morning Herald
The sound is bold but not simplistic, with layered synths and pillowy stretches of piano and pedal steel offset by Clark's heavily distorted riffs, which scrape and squeal like a robot on the rack.
80
The Arts Desk
Annie has her cake while shoving great handfuls of it in her mouth.
80
Record Collector
Self-destructive, seductive and supremely smart, Clark has thrown everything away and rebuilt herself for 2017 and, surely, a deeper success awaits.
80
The Observer

Accessible but challenging, Masseduction thumbs its nose at genre while Clark’s choice of producer – Jack Antonoff – roots it firmly in pop; it is, after all, an attempt to jump Clark from cult act to mass seductress. It’s working.

80
Q Magazine
Each St. Vincent album has outclassed the one before, and her fifth is no exception.
80
Northern Transmissions

MASSEDUCTION is an album that mixes themes like it does liquor in a cocktail, but above all it’s an album that puts aside metaphor and pageantry to show us exactly what goes on in Clark’s head. As it turns out, it’s just as interesting and beguiling as anything she’s ever released.

80
The Independent

Annie Clark’s industriously idiosyncratic manner on previous St. Vincent releases has often given the impression that she’s trying to distract her listeners, wreathing songs in such swirls of sonic invention that one sometimes loses track of which direction they’re headed, or what they’re about. That’s not so much the case with Masseduction.

80
Crack Magazine

For all its slippery surface bravado, Masseduction also offers a frank exploration of the tension between defiance and vulnerability, hedonism and self-destruction.

80
Mojo
It’s this mix of irrational thought and lightning bolt revelation with reliably bleeding-edge musical invention that keeps us listening throughout this dark, intense and utterly compelling record.
80
The 405
It's clear that while the album may have originated in Annie Clark's experiences, the end result is much bigger than that.
80
Uncut
It's a bravura fusion of dense-art metal/pop and strutting baroque disco.
80
The Guardian
Annie Clark’s sixth album as St Vincent is not immediately inviting. But it is fascinating, sometimes grimly so.
80
The Irish Times
The whole amounts to a less enigmatic St Vincent laying certain emotions on the line while simultaneously (indeed, almost unwillingly) holding back. The musical backdrop, however, is the clincher – there are so many wonderful, reflexive layers and strands here that it's sensory overload paradise.
80
Loud and Quiet
The result is a fierce, histrionic, riotous and deceptively beautiful record that, for the all the confessionalism, retains St Vincent’s alluringly enigmatic presence. Long may the mystery endure.
80
Slant Magazine
Clark's baroque musical sensibilities remain intact throughout Masseduction, but the increased tenderness of her vocal performances, coupled with more thematic emphasis on the push and pull of romantic relationships, offers a moving counterweight to St. Vincent's typically wry cultural commentary.
80
Rolling Stone
This album, a partnership with top pop whisperer Jack Antonoff, is a masterpiece of confrontational intimacy, and Clark lays herself bare as only a woman who has seen her life suddenly become tabloid fodder can.
80
Time Out London

Each album Clark makes is a leap forward. If she’s aiming to ravish the lot of us, mission accomplished.

80
Exclaim!

Clark promised us "sex and drugs and sadness" on MASSEDUCTION, and while that sounds like a recipe for clichéd disaster, she kept her word and managed to fashion a totally refreshing take in the process.

80
American Songwriter

MASSEDUCTION is in many ways a complicated struggle between St. Vincent the art project and Annie Clark the human being.

76
Pitchfork
Clark has achieved rockstar grandeur, as well as rock stars’ greatest musical vice: unsubtle commentary on the problems of today.
70
PopMatters
It might not be the preeminent masterpiece many are already making it out to be, but the album does have some great moments, and it bodes good things for the trajectory of St. Vincent’s ongoing career.
70
Spill Magazine

Recorded in Los Angeles, Antonoff’s studio in Brooklyn, NY, along with Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, the new CD Masseduction is a different kind of record – one minute haunting like the excellent “Hang On Me” to the new single “Los Ageless,” Masseduction tends to draw you in, like all good records should.

70
Spectrum Culture
Even when she’s wrapped her angst and panic in slick beats and her signature guitar shredding, she still knows how to write one hell of a line.
70
Clash
For all its merits, much of the chaos on ‘MASSEDUCTION’ tends to move rapidly in one ear and out the other, making it a pleasant but somewhat faceless affair.
70
Sputnikmusic

It takes some time to get past the initial discomfort that comes with MASSEDUCATION’s brazen and divergent antics, but at the end of the road there’s quite a good record worth delving into. You might end up being surprised by how much of yourself you see in St. Vincent’s “weirdest” effort to date.

60
No Ripcord

It’s somewhat off-putting to witness Clark, who handles her artful presence with mannered precision, discard any sight of a clear objective on Masseduction.

60
The Needle Drop

St. Vincent delivers her most inconsistent album yet with MASSEDUCTION.

matteo
90

Against all odds, St. Vincent just keeps getting better. Her self-titled album set an impossibly high bar, but MASSEDUCTION vaults right over it. The bangers bang and the ballads will have you bawling. Like Annie, I can’t turn off what turns me on... and that means I’ll have this record on repeat until her next one drops. Nothing to fear in that future.

Favorites: “Hang on Me,” “Pills,” “Masseduction,” “Los Ageless,” “New ... read more

nijakiler17
NR

uh oh i just popped a little bone dog, asshole. fuck you.

dyelir
88

On MASSEDUCTION, St. Vincent proves again that she's ahead of the curve, able to provide commentary on society's contemporary views of fervor while still self-mythologizing. These cunning lyrics atop her seasoned pop-rock instincts culminate into an album that will be among the year's best.

contessa
85

she had a guitar and a dream

GloriusVision
92

"Carregado de poder e uma beleza devastadora, 'MASSEDUCTION' encontra uma Annie Clark em pura catarse emocional."

Vinda de uma carreira consistente dentro da indústria musical, a artista St. Vincent experimentou de tudo um pouco, com suas canções possuindo grandes influências do indie rock, do rock alternativo e do electropop. Já aqui se tem um disco carregado de sintetizadores e com um teor maximalista indo desde a sonoridade até os visuais ... read more

jewelbreak
90

St. Vincent - Masseduction: ✦✦✦✦½

⧽ Best: “Savior”
⧽ Worst: “Dancing w/ A Ghost”

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Added on: September 6, 2017