Strange Mercy by St. Vincent

Strange Mercy, St. Vincent's third studio album, came out on 4AD on September 12, 2011 in the UK, with the US getting it a day later. Anne Clark, the Dallas-raised former member of the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens' touring band, made this follow-up to 2009's Actor with John Congleton producing.

The baroque-pop poise is still there, but it keeps getting sliced open by her guitar, a melodic, distorted, serrated thing that sounds like it's fighting the arrangements and winning. "Cruel" and "Cheerleader" are the ones that stick. She designed the cover herself, with Tina Tyrell behind the camera. Critics swooned, it sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first three weeks, and its No. 19 peak on the Billboard 200 stood as her best until her next two solo records beat it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.