4AD

David Byrne & St. Vincent's first record together, Love This Giant, was released on 10th September. The album developed like many a New York City-bred friendship. Both parties are kind of hazy about how it began, but after a couple of semi-chance encounters, David Byrne and Annie Clark, who records and performs as St. Vincent, embarked upon a creative dialogue that has flourished over the last three years. David Byrne’s own boundary-erasing approach to pop music had arguably laid a broad foundation for a new generation of independent-minded artists in Brooklyn and beyond, including Clark, who’d been constructing bedroom recordings for several years before publicly assuming the moniker of St. Vincent. At first there was no structure or goal to their back and forth; it was purely a “What if” situation. But then Clark had the odd but ultimately brilliant notion that they write with a large brass band in mind, and that’s when they began to collaborate in earnest. Though Byrne and Clark each have an unmistakable sound and persona that have made them such compelling performers on their own, their voices manage to blend naturally, effortlessly, here. The brass lends the songs an appealing theatrical sheen while programmed percussion provides a contemporary feel. Happenstance may have brought these artists together, but the work they made as a pair felt more like fate.