The Relentless Sadness of St Vincent’s “Los Ageless”

As the title of her second single suggests, art rocker St. Vincent (Annie Clark) is poised for a return to biting satire after the poignant, heartfelt and soul-searching “New York”, the piano ballad lead single from her upcoming album MASSEDUCTION. Much of her penchant for said satire takes place, however, in the accompanying music video for “Los Ageless”, which seamlessly parallels Alex Da Corte’s hyper-colored music video for its predecessor.

There is no room for architectural homage or melancholic fondness for the city of angels. Instead, director Willo Perron has Clark engage in a highly stylized mockery of one stereotypically narcissistic LA socialite pastime after another: rhinoplasty, skin-stretching treatments, watching in-your-face female objectification on TV, yoga classes in animal print morphsuits, dipping one’s feet in green slime with dermatological properties, consuming squirming haute cuisine worm-like creatures.

The song itself goes for the emotional jugular instead of the intellect. Clark’s signature guitar playing re-assumes its central position, accompanied by relentless drum machines. Clark appears to be able to insulate herself from the obsessive and pathological pursuits of her new neighbors: ‘Girls in cages playing their guitars/ But how can I leave?/ I just follow the hood of my car’. The city’s scenery and problematic social milieu take a backseat to the heartbreak, desperation, devastation and desolation that (presumably) occurred there: ‘How can anybody have you and lose you — and not lose your mind, too?’