Actor

Insound Staff Pick - 2009! The follow-up to St. Vincent's (Annie Clark's) first album Marry Me (2007) features eleven new songs, all written and arranged by Clark. The arrangements are more masterful, the songwriting grander, the performances ever more confident and inspired.

Actor takes the ambitious compositional and sonic underpinnings of Clark's debut as a starting point and never looks back. The arrangements are more masterful, the songwriting grander, the performances ever more confident and inspired. "I wanted to make these songs technicolor animatronic rides," says Clark.

Clark sings and plays guitar, bass and keys on Actor, with woodwind contributions from Hideaki Aomori (Sufjan Stevens) and Alex Sopp (Bjork, Phillip Glass), and additional rhythm section work by McKenzie Smith and Paul Alexander of Midlake. Other musicians on the album include Mike Atkinson (French horn, score consultant), Daniel Hart (violin, sarongi), William Flynn (bass), and percussionists Jeff Ryan, Matthias Bossi, and Aynsley Powell.