March 8, 2024 / By: Josh Kitchen
St. Vincent is back. Annie Clark’s seventh studio album, All Born Screaming is out on April 26 from Virgin Music Group, and the lead single, "Broken Man" dropped just this morning. At just three minutes long, Broken Man is crunchy, slinky, riffy, industrial, sludgy, Annie Clark goodness. Quickly building up to a synthy, emotional release, Broken Man is St. Vincent’s heaviest song yet.
The single art features Clark hunched over with flames burning on each of her arms on a black background, like she’s been waiting to throw down some insane licks for a while. "Broken Man" is less a departure for Clark, as it is a return to what made her a modern guitar god among the likes of Josh Homme, Tom Morello, and Sleigh Bells’ Derek Miller. Clark has shed the Daddy's Home persona, and appears to be ready to get back to basics in a post COVID world ready for rocking the fuck out.
“What are you looking at who the hell do you think I am, what are you looking at/like you’ve never seen a broken man”, Clark sings over fuzzy playing reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age and your favorite doom metal band. "Broken Man" becomes an infectious earworm, releasing in an epic display of adrenaline guitar ecstasy, and this listener cannot wait for the full LP. Her first self-produced album, Clark enlists help from Dave Grohl, Cate Le Bon, and Josh Freese. “There are some places, emotionally, that you can only get to by taking the long walk into the woods alone — to find out what your heart is really saying. It sounds real because it is real,” Clark says of the self-production.
"Broken Man" is real as hell.
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