St. Vincent perfects her fractured, futuristic pop vision on Masseduction

Clark captures this emotional roller-coaster in her remarkably genre-agnostic music. Although Masseduction contains her familiar hallmarks—bursts of electric guitar, burrowing hooks, intricate execution—the record is futuristic and fractured pop that jumps between frantic new wave, industrial-tinted techno, minimalist balladry, and string-swept epics. Her collaborators aid and abet this approach. The sexualized funk of “Savior” features bass from Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, Nine Inch Nails); “Pills” boasts guest vocals from Jenny Lewis and mournful saxophone from Kamasi Washington; and co-producer Jack Antonoff contributes synths and programming throughout.

In other hands, combining these ideas would sound overly busy. However, Masseduction has a fantastical production sheen that gives its music a slightly otherworldly (and, at times, cartoonish) quality. More than that, the record is also a marvel of meticulous sequencing. Songs flow into one another in smart and subtle ways—“Los Ageless” borrows and slows down a rhythmic electro motif from the preceding “Sugarboy,” for example—and Clark wields her voice like another powerful instrument. On the brisk “Pills,” she murmurs, “Pills, pills, pills, every day of a week,” in a no-nonsense tone, as if it hails from a twisted version of Mary Poppins. Her grief-stricken shrieks on “Young Lover” resemble someone in the throes of all-consuming physical agony.

Clark recently told Buzzfeed that Masseduction asks, “What does power look like, who wields it, how do they wield it—emotionally, sexually, financially?” Exploring those balances of power gives Masseduction its inherent tension and anxiety. But it also doesn’t let instability win. The final song, “Smoking Section,” talks about going to the edge, nearly giving in to violent and dark tendencies, then deliberately taking a step back. “It’s not the end,” Clark repeats, in a weary and increasingly faded-sounding voice, as ghostly pedal steel smoke rings curl up around her.

Defeated as she sounds, it’s an unmistakable declaration of power—an emotional cliffhanger that leaves the door cracked for new beginnings. Masseduction is a manual on how to go through hell and back, then emerge stronger than ever. It’s a record that wrests control from turmoil and believes that a different, better future is possible. It’s the best encapsulation of her vision to date, here fully under her control.