St. Vincent's 'New York' Is A Bright Lament

St. Vincent's piano-led, string-swept breakup ballad "New York" will leave you broken and sympathetic in love's raging path. "You're the only mother****** in the city who can stand me," Annie Clark sings, each word matter-of-factly stinging on the beat.

Alex Da Corte, whose luminous pop-art is at once eccentric and funny, takes St. Vincent's "New York" into his brightly-colored realm of the outrageous and the everyday. Clark channels the pain in a corner flower store, on a bubblegum-purple couch with a swan, and turning a replica of Tony Rosenthal's Alamo sculpture (better known as the Astor Place Cube) with a butt hanging out of one of its crevices. Clark also just looks fabulous, and has already inspired a "New York" mood board among our staff.

The song is the only we've heard from Clark's forthcoming, yet-unnamed record, of which the only details we know of come from a recent and lengthy profile of her by The New Yorker; which include her recruiting Jack Antonoff, the denim'd studio muse du jour of pop, for it; that it's design elements will be informed by Willo Perron, another vision-distiller for pop megastars.

St. Vincent goes on tour starting Oct. 7.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.