David Byrne has never shied away from collaborating with other interesting musicians. Case in point: his new album with Annie Clark (a/k/a St. Vincent), Love This Giant.
In truth — I am so out of the loop musically anymore — I’d never heard of Annie Clark (as herself or as St. Vincent). She’s been around for several years now, playing, singing, and recording with several indie bands as well as on her own. She and Byrne crossed paths at a couple of concerts, and their first actual contact was arranged by a charity project interested in seeing them together in a benefit performance… a performance in a bookstore. Over the course of some months, they toyed around with with some ideas — among them, how best to deal with the acoustics in such a small space. Clark, it seems, came up with the what’s-wrong-with-this-picture? idea of using a brass band as the principal accompaniment.
Sadly, no one has yet put together that bookstore performance; happily, Clark and Byrne have given us a song, and now a video, like this one. In the video, Byrne — channeling his familiar dancing-stork soul through the body of, say, the later Dan O’Herlihy — comes across a lovely, apparently helpless young lady lying in the road, and proceeds to pepper her with question marks. She answers only with one of the most difficult questions of all, and one that Byrne’s character himself manages to leave out (and disregard):
[Lyrics]
“Who” is the first song in the track listing. From reviewers who’ve heard the entire album, I understand that Byrne and Clark sorta-kinda take turns on lead vocals as they work their way through Love This Giant (which will be released in the US on Tuesday, 9/11). So far, I’ve heard only one other single, the second and rather perkier track, “Weekend in the Dust”… in which — yes — Clark does the vocal honors. The horns are still there, too, especially a big old saxophone and/or tuba:
[Below, click Play button to begin Weekend in the Dust. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:07 long.]
[Lyrics not yet available]
