David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This Giant

David Byrne & St. Vincent
Love This Giant
2016
Spotify

David Byrne is a 100% legend, and for many St. Vincent (Amie Clark) is the same. From the moment you look at that album cover you realize that things are just slightly off with this picture. Clark's face is distorted via prosthetics as well as Byrne's cleft chin. Both have very interesting and beautiful faces and messing around with them sort of symbolizes the journey they are taking with this record. Love This Giant does not feel like something here to stay for either artist. This record is an experiment, both musically and as a whole in creating something that is just left of center and step back to see what happens. The result is a horn heavy sonic explosion with an insanely great sense of rhythm. "Dinner For Two"s opening is reminiscent of Sufjan's Come on Feel the Illinois with it's use of big sounds to push the music forward. Love This Giant never tries to shrink or feel small, it takes on big ideas and expands them to their very outer limits. The sound is almost like they took a big band and decided they were going to play funk instead. Bryne's voice may have aged a bit, but it is still every bit as clear and direct as it ever has been. We occasionally get a glimpse of Clark's incredibly underrated guitar playing but unlike St. Vincent it doesn't feature as prominently.

The one thing you get from the record however is these two probably aren't the biggest fans of each other personally. They rarely sing together on the record, wrote all their own lyrics and Clark feels much more like an inclusion rather than a true collaborator. It makes sense that Byrne's aesthetic would dominate, but a lot of the time St. Vincent seems like she is sleepwalking through this one. Much of this sound has been done before, perhaps not with a delivery as kooky as Clark and Byrne, but the horns punctuated with electronic beats is a path that many have taken at this point. In the middle of the record you are almost begging for something weirder, more off the wall from these two, but the theme they set with the first song never quite develops or goes anywhere. The real sense you leave the record with is this is a missed opportunity. These are two really distinct voices in the musical world and they don't seem to be on the same wavelength here. There is a real risk with this record to let these two slide and praise it based on the names alone, and it really is exciting to hear these two together, but that soon wears off and we are left with a record that is perfectly fine, but rarely transcendent. Worth a listen to say you did it and a couple tracks may stick, but beyond that I really don't see Love This Giant going the distance.

7.1 out of 10