Love This Giant by St. Vincent
Love This Giant is a studio album made in collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent, released on 4AD and Todo Mundo on September 10, 2012, in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States. Byrne and Annie Clark of St. Vincent began working together in late 2009, using a writing and promotion process that Byrne had previously used on his 2008 collaboration with Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The duo had previously played together live at a St. Vincent show and on the album Here Lies Love. The performers enlisted a variety of brass musicians to augment their songwriting and have embarked on a tour to promote the album.
This unexpected pairing of former Talking Heads leader David Byrne and St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark) is made all the more unusual by its elaborate process. Very little time was spent head to head in the studio; rather, over three years the duo composed songs via email and by Logic software. Four instrumentalists (Tony Finno, Lenny Pickett, Kelly Pratt, and Ken Thomson) crafted the elaborate horn parts that dominate the album and bring out the songs' baroque effects. Byrne and Clark alternate lead vocals and support one another when necessary. Clark's guitar explorations are seriously curtailed, while Byrne's eclectic world beat (on drum machines) and bizarre, detached polemics feel comfortably familiar. He's been exploring his remote relationship with the world since his earliest days with Talking Heads. "I Am an Ape" and "The Forest Awakes," like many of the album's best tracks, sound as if they've wandered into a mutant avant-garde rock opera.
