issue 13 // volume 44

St. Vincent returns with her
first truly personal album

> ‘Masseduction’ album review

Lauren Kelly
Graphics Manager

kwek

t. Vincent, the stage name of Anne

Clark, released her fifth studio album
Masseduction on October 13. Over the
past few years, St. Vincent has grown
from a critically-acclaimed indie artist to
someone known for more than just her
music due to her long-term relationship
with model Cara Delevingne. Even if she is
still mysterious, knowing more about the
singer’s life definitely adds some weight to
the songs about love, loss, and loneliness.

In album-opener “Hang on Me,” St.
Vincent quietly greets us “T know you're
probably sleepin’/I’ve got this thing I been
thinkin’/Yeah, I admit I been drinkin’/
The void is back and I’m blinkin” Second
track “Pills” is a fast-paced, disorienting
song about her use of pills to help her
cope with anxiety and depression and help
her sleep. The title track, “Masseduction,”
is the first of two songs explicitly and
unapologetically about sex from a woman’s
perspective. “I can’t turn off what turns me
on,” she croons over heavy guitars. What
matters in this song is what turns her on,
even when it leads to “Massdestruction.”
“Sugarboy” is about gender roles, with
St. Vincent relating to both genders
amid segregating chants of “Boys! Girls!
Boys! Girls!” These three tracks form
a fantastic run, with the interesting,
often hectic instrumentals bringing the
listener fully into St. Vincent’s world.

With Masseduction, St. Vincent
mixes her early high-tempo tracks with
later slow ballads like “Happy Birthday,
Johnny,” “New York,” and “Slow Disco,”

 

These are all successfully affecting,
particularly “Happy Birthday, Johnny.” The
song finds the titular character of “Prince
Johnny,” off St. Vincent's previous album,
on the street, begging the singer for some
money for food and accusing her of faking
a charitous image: “What happened to
blood/Our family/Annie, how could you
do this to me?” With St. Vincent’s songs,
it can be hard to know how much is true
and how much is fiction, but the use of
her real name in this track makes it feel
all the more heartbreakingly real. The
only fault to be found with this track
is as part of the album as a whole; it is
jarringly followed by the sexy “Saviour,”
a song about roleplaying as a nurse,
nun, or policewoman for her lover,
making the previous track’s closing lines
“When you get free Johnny/I hope you
find peace” lose a little bit of punch.
Masseduction’s first two singles
focus on both US coasts, and both
deal with loss in their own ways. “New
York” reads like a break-up song but

A wonder of a movie

> ‘Wonder’ film review

Jerrison Oracion
Senior Columnist

krekkk

O riginally, I was going to watch
the new Justice League film,
but I couldn’t because I have not
seen all of the films that are related
to Justice League. Instead, I saw
Wonder, which tells the story of a boy
who is considered unlikable fitting
in at a prep school, based on the
bestselling book by RJ. Palacio.
Auggie Pullman (BC’s Jacob
Tremblay) was born with an illness
called Treacher Collins Syndrome and
had to undergo 28 surgeries to fix his
face. When his mother, Isabel (Julia
Roberts), puts him in Beecher Prep for
middle school, which his father, Nate
(Owen Wilson), does not want him
to attend, Auggie has a rough start.
However, when some of the students
spend time with him, he does wonderful
things for the people around him.
The film not only follows Auggie,
it also follows the people he interacts

 

 

with. Each story intertwines with
the others to show how something
leads to an event, and this makes the
film work—beginning with his sister,
Via (Izabela Vidovic), so that we see
what she is going through. The film
also focuses on Isabel trying to bea
children’s book author, and her story
is spread out throughout the film.
There is a line that some people
will laugh at when one of the students

 

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St. Vincent has stated that it is more
about the loss of Davie Bowie (“I have
lost a hero/I have lost a friend”), who is
a large source of inspiration for her. The
song finds her singing beautifully over a
bare piano, with none of her trademark
guitar and theatrics. “Los Ageless” brings
us back to those signatures, with the
singer fighting bitingly against the city
while still lamenting the loss of love:
“How could anybody have you and lose
you and not lose their minds, too?”

The latter half of the album deals
with even heavier subject matter. “Young
Lover” is a track more explicitly about her
relationship with Delevingne, specifically
about her fear over Delevingne’s drug
use. The next two songs, “Dancing witha
Ghost” and “Slow Disco,” recall “We Put
a Pearl in the Ground” and “Landmines”
from St. Vincent’s debut album, Marry
Me. The first two tracks in both couplets
are short instrumental tracks that serve
as lead-ins for the latter two, and both
are slow songs that deal with the loss

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in the prep school says that she landed
a part in an episode of Law and Order.
I was laughing at a scene in the film in
which Auggie helps his best friend, Jack
(Noah Jupe), with a science quiz, and
when they finish it Auggie drops his
pencil like he is dropping a microphone.
Also, there are funny moments from
Homeland’s Mandy Patinkin as the
principal of Beecher Prep, Mr. Tushman.
The soundtrack of Wonder has

arts // no. 9

of a relationship. In “Landmines,” St.
Vincent is searching for her lost partner
through landmines that she admits
she planted, causing them to leave; in
“Slow Disco,” she is the one who leaves,
even though she is happy, because it’s
better than holding onto a relationship
that is just a “slow dance to death.”

The final track is, to me, one of
the most affecting. “Smoking Section”
deals with suicial ideation—as a way
to be free, to deal with the loss of a
relationship, and, most worryingly, as
a way of getting back at the partner
who left. The album ends with a sad,
repeated chant: “It’s not the end”

Having now played four of her five
albums on repeat throughout the years
(I somehow skipped 2009’s Actor), I find
this to be her least sonically consistent
album, and also the least sonically
interesting. It doesn’t contain anything
approaching “Rattlesnake” or “Bring Me
Your Loves” in terms of outlandishness,
and that’s something that I truly miss.
However, unlike her previous albums,
the theme of Masseduction does not deal
with St. Vincent the character; this one
is incredibly more personal. In addition,
while it doesn’t have the consistency of her
previous albums, its callbacks to them and
the inspiration it draws from them make
it a treat to listen to as a long-time fan.
This is the album she needed to make
right now, since she has spent the last
few years in the limelight with her most
successful album, St. Vincent, and her
relationship starting and ending very
publically. I hope her next album shares
more in common with St. Vincent
(or, a girl can dream, Marry Me), but
this is still a wonderful offering.

songs that can be heard in other films,
which works well for this film, including
a song that is in Napoleon Dynamite,
“The Monster Mash,” Bruce Springsteen’s
version of “Santa Claus is Coming

to Town,” and a choir version of The
Polyphonic Spree song “Light and Day.”

While the film takes place in
New York City, most of it was filmed
in the Lower Mainland. Via’s high
school scenes were filmed in Heritage
Woods Secondary School, the courts
of British Columbia can be seen in
some scenes, and the nature reserve
scenes were filmed in Camp Howdy.

To prepare for the film, Tremblay
went to SickKids Hospital in Toronto to
see people who have Treacher Collins
Syndrome and learn what they had to
go through with the illness. During
the filming of it, Tremblay had to
spend two hours having makeup done
to make him look like his character.

Wonder is probably one of the
best films of this year. I will end
this review paraphrasing a line from
the film: “When choosing between
right and kind, choose kind.”