Love This Giant
David Byrne & St. Vincent 4AD; 201 2
originally published September 17, 2012 on Probably Just Hungry
Few teamups have had me as intrigued as that of St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark) and David Byrne’s. If Byrne’s past partnerships (Brian Eno, Arcade Fire, Selena, etc.) are of any indication, the ex-Talking Head is a sucker for throwing his well-established sound into the thralls of various music cultures and seeing what happens. Clark, who cut her teeth in the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens’ touring band, has plenty to bring to the equation. Toeing the line between odd and obvious, these two tend to inhabit strange facets of pop culture, and on this record they shine through. Love This Giant has Clark providing a constant supply of off-kilter guitar licks and Byrne bringing the familiar bounce of his Talking Heads days, not to mention the combination of both members’ distinct vocal styles, which boost the sound into a strange frenzy. It makes sense that we’re seeing these two individuals coming together, and it doesn’t surprise me that the concept coalesces into a unified sound. The marriage of Byrne’s and Clark’s practices is a hypothetical match made in heaven and comes together visually with the album cover: a posed and Puritanical portrait, complete with matching formalwear (with all buttons buttoned and all smiles stifled) that echoes the austerity of Grant Wood’s hallmark of perfect simplicity American Gothic. The real eye-catcher, however, are the fleshy prosthetics stuck onto the faces of both artists. It’s a strange addition, but it falls in line with Byrne’s penchant with playing with the image of the human body and its movements. Here it only highlights the weird science between the partnership — twin art-pop troubadours linked across different eras whose collaboration forms a strong, unified body of work, but still comes out warped and screwy.
The sound comes together in the first single of Love This Giant, which is also the album opener. ”Who” offers a little bit of everything present rest of the effort, most notably the interplay between Byrne’s nervously wavering tenor with Clark’s smooth and silky cooing, the solid rhythm section characteristic of the St. Vincent moniker, and the incessant horn chorus that continues throughout the record. It’s hard to pick out exactly who contributed what in the track until listening to a few times (which is a good sign), but after a while you can tell the vocal melody and lyrics were definitely Byrne’s, whereas the misshapen main guitar riff sound off with St. Vincent’s signature ring. The dancing — that’s all Byrne. Clark’s mimicry of his jagged funk swagger (and their even- tual role swap in the video) is the best possible proof that these two came together in the studio and instantly saw eye-to-eye. Or is it chin-to-chin?