St. Vincent

St. Vincent is Annie Clark, a petite, delicate looking woman. She has a sweet, light voice when she sings, and she looks like she could be talented the cousin of Regina Spektor. She incorporates strings, woodwinds, brass, pianos, and keyboards in her music in a sophisticated way.

But she isn't always this light and happy. Her music is often very dark and strange. Her guitar is harsh and "gnarly," as she puts it. Her music can be very intense and brooding, and in just a few seconds, be very calm and moderate. She uses both her guitar and her voice to create this effect, playing or singing sweet melodies, then blasting broken guitar sounds and synthesizing her voice over frazzled lyrics.

She is a paradox.

Like Nate Williams, she has two distinct styles that are very contradicting. But unlike Nate Williams, she merges them into one, making her music laughably dark, in an almost crazy way. It's as if she is happy about being upset, hurt, angry. Her music sounds is masochistic - light about being dark - in the most polite way. There's just something about the combination of her two styles that makes it humorous, but humorous in a sad way.

This combination of styles is a perfectly valid alternative to Nate Williams' separation of styles. It makes the end product thicker, with more layers, more mysteries. This is a good lesson to be learned - that sometimes the split is good, and sometimes the combination is good. And sometimes all three are good.