Ultimate Sins

St. Vincent's Actor and Funeral Mist's Maranatha

by J. Edward Keyes

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Published: May 5, 2009

Pop quiz: On which of the following records is the lyric "With our daddy's Smith & Wesson/ We've got to teach them all a lesson" contained? Is it A) Actor (4AD), the second record by doe-eyed Brooklyn chanteuse St. Vincent, or B) Maranatha (Southern Lord), the latest from psychotic Scandinavian black metal band Funeral Mist? The answer is the former, but that it could just have likely turned up on either says a lot about both artists' ability to obliterate borders.

Funeral Mist Maranatha (Southern Lord)

St. Vincent Actor (4AD)

St. Vincent, born Annie Clark, is a deeply spiritual songwriter who openly and giddily flirts with the darkness; Funeral Mist is unabashedly Satanic, but their song titles and lyrics steal so blatantly from evangelical Christianity ("Jesus Saves!," "Sword of Faith"), that it takes a few listens before you realize they're joking ("Maranatha" means "our Lord has come," and it's highly unlikely Funeral Mist intends that last word to mean "arrived").

Both "bands" are essentially one-person operations: Clark does the bulk of the writing and arranging on her records and Funeral Mist is the brainchild of a fellow named Arioch, whose past exploits are appropriately mysterious. Both Actor and Maranatha are on the short list of great records released so far this year, and both of them are clearly the products of distinct and singular visions. Clark's instrument of choice is the synthesizer: Actor is larded with spectacular globs of it, the title track collapsing in a wheezing heap of electronics and "Marrow" bounds along on big rubbery bands of the same. The obvious jumping-off point is Kate Bush, but St. Vincent's songs are more snub-nosed and sarcastic. Arioch, unsurprisingly, favors guitars. Maranatha is a carnival horror show of sound: Jackhammer riffing is interrupted by long, mournful choral passages, songs suddenly slowing down and grinding hard against a single filthy guitar passage. It's stunning in its texture and scope, averting the traditional black metal wasps-in-a-bottle approach in favor of truly terrifying music that balances gore and gravitas.

Should the two auteurs ever encounter each other in an alley, neither would escape unscathed.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)

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