After much teasing, it’s official. St. Vincent‘s sixth album is called Daddy’s Home, due out May 14 via Loma Vista (pre-order), and lead single “Pay Your Way In Pain” has arrived, along with a video directed by Bill Benz (who also directed the film The Nowhere Inn, which Annie Clark starred in alongside Carrie Brownstein).

Annie co-produced the album with Jack Antonoff, who also worked on her previous album MASSEDUCTION, and it was recorded by Laura Sisk, mixed by Cian Riordan, and mastered by Chris Gehringer. The music was performed by Annie, Jack, Cian, Thomas Bartlett, Evan Smith, Sam KS, Greg Leisz, Daniel Hart, Michael Leonhard, Lynne Fiddmont and Kenya Hathaway.

Giving more background on the album, a press release reads:

In the winter of 2019, as MASSEDUCTION‘s title track won the GRAMMY for Best Rock Song and the album won Best Recording Package, St. Vincent’s father was released from prison. She began writing the songs that would become Daddy’s Home, closing the loop on a journey that began with his incarceration in 2010, and ultimately led her back to the vinyl her dad had introduced her to during her childhood. The records she has probably listened to more than any other music in her entire life. Music made in sepia-toned downtown New York from 1971-1975.

Annie herself says, “Daddy’s Home collects stories of being down and out in downtown NYC. Last night’s heels on the morning train. Glamour that’s been up for three days straight.”

You can definitely feel that vibe coming through in the sleazy, funk/glam of “Pay Your Way In Pain.” Hints of Bowie and Prince, but unmistakably St. Vincent. Check out the new song/video:

Annie also did a video interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music’s New Music Daily (which you can watch below), and she said in part:

St. Vincent: So the record is called Daddy’s Home, there’s a song on the record called “Daddy’s Home,” too, and it talks about my dad was put in prison for white collar crime and he just got out at the end of 2019. So I had a lot to write about, you know what I mean?

Zane Lowe: Is this common knowledge, Annie? I mean, have you spoken about this before? Or is this something that was like, “All right, cool. Now I can write about this and it is what it is, part of who I am”?

St. Vincent : Well, it’s a funny thing, because the whole record, my whole record, Strange Mercy, really centers around it because it was right at the time when he got put away. And so I really kept it quiet because I wanted to protect my family and I wanted to just express myself only through the music and not necessarily get too autobiographical about it. But now that it’s 10 years later and he’s out and it ostensibly has a happy ending, which is, we’re cool and he’s okay and he’s out. And I felt like it was okay to talk more explicitly about it. It had been there were dribbles about it in the press, in the Daily Mail, which was a bummer.

[…] Like I said, I had a lot to write about, but also I just went back to these records that my dad introduced me to as a kid. All the Stevie Wonder stuff from basically ’71 to ’76, that really, he’s got a lot of great periods, but there’s a really special Stevie Wonder period in there with Talking Book and Innervisions, and then all the Steely Dan sh-t from the early ’70s. And just that sound of New York, when the dream of the ’60s was over, the idealism was like, “Uh-oh,” and we’re into this nihilistic streak of the early ’70s when things are … pretty, pretty bad. They’re pretty bad. And that feels like, not to be too harsh because there’s always a silver lining, but that feels like where we are now, which is every system of power is crumbling or has crumbled or has failed, and we’re grappling with, “What the f-k do we do in this new world?” So it just worked out that way that those timelines I feel, where we were then and where we are now, feel like they’re very simpatico.

Tracklist
01. Pay Your Way In Pain
02. Down And Out Downtown
03. Daddy’s Home
04. Live In The Dream
05. The Melting Of The Sun
06. Humming Interlude 1
07. The Laughing Man
08. Down
09. Humming Interlude 2
10. Somebody Like Me
11. My Baby Wants A Baby
12. …At The Holiday Party
13. Candy Darling
14. Humming Interlude 3