MASSEDUCTION

Pushing past the GRAMMY®-winning art rock of 2014’s <i>St. Vincent</i>, <i>Masseduction</i> finds Annie Clark teaming up with Jack Antonoff (as well as Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave) for a pop masterpiece that radiates and revels in paradox—vibrant yet melancholy, cunning yet honest, friendly yet confrontational, deeply personal yet strangely inscrutable. She moves from synthetic highs to towering power-ballad comedowns (“Pills”), from the East Coast (the unforgettable “New York”) to “Los Ageless”, where, amid a bramble of strings and woozy electronics, she admits, “I try to write you a love song/But it comes out a lament”.