Monday 3/8: St. Vincent—"Pay Your Way In Pain"
Today, we share our thoughts on the new St. Vincent song. The one everyone's talking about.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc. Three days of the week are free but you can get access to all five weekly posts by subscribing for $5/month via Substack or $2/month via our Patreon.
Today, we share our thoughts on the new St. Vincent song.
St. Vincent—"Pay Your Way In Pain"
Eli Enis:
In an interview last year, St. Vincent described her new album as having the color palette of the film Taxi Driver. A gritty and despondent emotional pivot from the neon pink bombast of 2017’s MASSEDUCTION. I think the record’s first single, "Pay Your Way In Pain", makes good on that promise. It’s a sleazy funk track sees Annie Clark groaning with a dramatically gauzy affect about the emotional drain of being broke and stagnant, emitting a form of bored desperation that feels complementary to Taxi Driver’s anti-hero, Travis Bittle. I don’t have a robust knowledge of the St. Vincent back-catalog, so I can’t speak to whether this is as much of a musical reinvention as Clark is claiming it to be. But I don’t know, I think this song was pretty cool! I know Eric feels differently lol.
Eric Bennett:
Oh, Annie, what are we going to do with you? I’ve seen many favorite artists of mine enter their flop era, and some manage to escape relatively unscathed from them. Some sadly don’t ever revive their careers, but you’re Annie Clark. Nothing can shake your grip on rock too much. Though, since 2017’s MASSEDUCTION, which, despite boasting some excellent songs, turned up a fairly mixed bag, and your helming of Sleater Kinney’s fairly disastrous The Center Won’t Hold, it feels like you needed a win.
St. Vincent’s career arc feels like something that can be mapped out. A steady rise from album to album, peaking at 2015’s self-titled record. Since then, capitalizing on the notoriety has been messy. Daddy’s Home’s rollout is off to a rocky start, and it seems doubtful that “Pay Your Way in Pain” can steer St. Vincent back on her upward climb. The song feels garbled and clumsy, its aesthetic, meant to evoke the Thin White Duke or 1970’s New York, just looks like a bad Pulp Fiction Halloween costume. I will give Annie the benefit of the doubt in regards to the rest of the record, but I’m nervous. Perhaps if this flames out we will see Clark return to the “angularity” she believes she pushed as far as it would go. I’d like that, at least.