St. Vincent has never shied away from exuberating a lust and love for the music she creates; a lot of which have centered around a pop-like subtext, ranging from the noise and art pop of Actress to the glam rock and synth pop rock of Masseducation. She has always been an ever-growing force in music that doesn’t let universal appeal become a drawback into her artistry, and the bold choices she makes on weaving her vocal performances to fit the nuanced funk/soul sounds of her new album, Daddy’s Home, feel like a breath of fresh air. In a way these sounds have allowed her vocal performances to envelop a new stratosphere, where a lot of the key-sonic undertones of early 70s funk, sways her in this nostalgic direction, which shows the visceral strength behind the talent of both St. Vincent (Annie Clark) and Co-Producer Jack Antanoff. 

Daddy’s Home is very personal for St. Vincent, diving deep into the crevices of her life and allowing it to integrate different narrative styles. Whether she is implementing herself in a party to establish a social misery that she masks amongst friends and family or being referential to detail the stress the media induces with certain standards on, she keeps it emotionally resonating with the melodic and melancholic nuances in her vocal performance and its pace. It brings more to the atmospheric and soulful texture over many funk-inspired tracks and the more broken down instrumental like “…At The Holiday Party.” 

One of the few cruxes of Daddy’s Home goes beyond the dimensions of sonic direction. As this is her first foray into these beautiful nostalgic – era defining sounds, it comes across naturalistic and her pain, her determination, and the way life around her interacts, brings about a new sense of clarity musically. Along with Jack Antanoff, she brings a plethora of grooves and melodies that drive home the deepening realism in her themes and performances. The title song brings variant indications that the album will balance its tonal inflections with the production. 

The kind of funk that emboldens various aspects of the production on Daddy’s Home doesn’t always take a renowned approach to the pacing and instead develops a leaner and softer-melodic texture more attune to her strengths. Midway through, St. Vincent takes that unique turn by bringing forth an uptempo with an elevation in the notes of the wurlitzer and the groovy-loud bass patterns, which guides the direction laid out by the opening track, “Pay Your Way.” The funkadelic sounds don’t always get an uptick from the vibrant bass grooves and infectious sequences in the production that comes from the masterful mixing of layers by Chris Gehringer, who has mixed Loud by Rihanna and most recently Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. His work in creating the final mix has given St. Vincent’s vocals a very open and focused limelight.

Her vocal performances contain ranges in pace, which in most cases takes the emotional gravitas that embodies soul music and gives it character, in this melodic way. But the unique approach to using modulation and effects gives the vocals an elevation that the backing vocals do a little better. The modulation on “Pay Your Way,” gives it that extra level of authenticity to the kind of modulation usage in funk music from artists of yester. However, the effects on “Down,” are subtle; it gives the song and her performance a naturalistic rock approach in the vigorously strong electric guitars and thumping percussion. 

Most times St. Vincent takes the slower and melodic soul vocals and she delivers some buried emotions from the kind of relationship she has had with her father, whose release from prison was the light bulb for this sonically conceptual album. It’s a loose inspiration as she takes it to tell a bigger story that seems to be misplaced for the time. Daddy’s Home is at point literal and abstract in the music, using these stories to tell the bigger picture. But without the nuanced sound, the album’s nostalgia trip is lost within a newspaper from years ago when a white-collar crime got equal notoriety as opposed to others. It ignites the range in emotions hidden beneath. You can hear the anger, the disappointment, and the aspiration to get through the hurdles that encompass the overall being of one.

Daddy’s Home brings an influx of new sounds that make it different from what we are used to from St. Vincent, but she makes it her own and develops a beautiful array of soulful vocal performances. It elevates the emotional grip she has on the words, which become more impactful the more you listen to it.