St. Vincent Dives Headfirst Into the Darkness

Maybe, at hellish moments in human history, emotional illegibility starts making more intuitive sense.

In general, whenever human history darkens, this impulse—to obscure meaning, to flatten affect, to don expressive masks—emerges. Chaos erupts, entropy spreads, mistrust multiplies. There’s some occult math at work: Overturn enough treasured assumptions at a proper velocity, and we will begin to doubt even our most basic impulses.

 "I believe," he writes, "that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, new friends."  The point is that a cappella harnesses the creative intelligence of a whole group. By contrast, says Eno, high art is about separating geniuses from foot soldiers. "A cappella subverts that: it's highly composed music but th... See more

I wrote the album in a time when I was feeling incredibly numb. I would have these huge waves of emotion, whether they were anger or joy. And to me, those are two emotions that sort of take over. It's terrifying to let go in that way, but it can be one of the fullest [experiences] of just living, in general. So letting go is really what Surrender i... See more