All Born Screaming (2024)

All Born Screaming is the seventh studio album by American rock musician St. Vincent, released on April 26, 2024, through her own Total Pleasure Records and distributed via Virgin Music Group. The album was self-produced and features musical contributions from several notable artists. It was preceded by three singles: "Broken Man", "Flea" and "Big Time Nothing".

The album won three of its four nominations at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards: Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Song for "Broken Man", and Best Alternative Music Performance for "Flea". A Spanish re-recording of the album, titled Todos Nacen Gritando, was released on November 15, 2024, followed by a special Japanese edition with live bonus tracks.

The album debuted at number 86 on the US Billboard 200 selling 10,000 pure album sales in its first week.

Background and promotion

On February 16, 2024, Clark first spoke about the record, saying how she "needed to go deeper in finding [her] own sonic vocabulary" and referring to the album as "post-plague pop". All Born Screaming marks the first studio album entirely produced by Clark herself, alongside mixing by Cian Riordan. The record features contributions from Dave Grohl and Josh Freese of Foo Fighters, Cate Le Bon, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Rachel Eckroth, Mark Guiliana, and David Ralicke of Dengue Fever. Trying to explain the sound of the album, Clark compared it to "taking the long walk into the woods alone" in order to find the messages of your heart. As a result, she opined that it "sounds real because it is real".

Clark shared the lead single "Broken Man", an "industrial menacing rock" piece, on February 29, 2024, along with a music video directed by Alex Da Corte. During the video, she bursts into flames, an image that is also depicted as the album artwork. A second single, "Flea", was released on March 28, the same day the All Born Screaming Tour was officially announced. A Japanese edition, with live bonus tracks, was announced to be released on December 25, 2024.

Writing and recording

As soon as St Vincent's previous studio album, Daddy's Home (2021), was released, Clark immediately began writing for its follow-up. Clark began experimenting with drum machines and modular synthesizers where she said she ended up making "hours and hours of esoteric post-industrial dance music" on her own. During this experimentation period, Clark got into microdosing on psychedelic drugs.

All Born Screaming was recorded at six studios in three cities, including Clark's own Compound Fracture studio in Los Angeles, Electric Lady Studios in New York and Electrical Audio in Chicago. It is her first self-produced album. Clark felt a need to self-produce the album as there "were sounds in my head that, really, only I could render" and wanting to be seen as a singular artist with greater control over her own work. Paste described All Born Screaming as "career-spanning time capsule harboring the flourishes of her greatest eras" that incorporates elements of lounge, noise rock, baroque, funk, chamber pop and electronica.

Regarding the album's title, Clark noted: "We're all born in some ways against our will. But at the same time, if you're born screaming, it's a great sign – it's a sign you're alive. We're all born in protest, so screaming is what it means to be alive". Clark elaborated: "I've known I was going to make a record called All Born Screaming since I was 23, but I just wasn't ready. I wasn't really worthy of the title, 'cause you have to live a lot to be worthy of a title that really says it all. It's the beauty, it's the brutality, and it's all part of the same continuum".

"Big Time Nothing" is a synth and bass-driven funky dance-pop track that Clark says reminds her of the "early '90s London … The Prodigy, sort of, like, rave moment". The track's verse, which is delivered in a spoken-word style, came from Clark's own "constant inner monologue of depression and anxiety". The track "Sweetest Fruit" includes an ode to the late music producer Sophie, who died in 2021 after a fall that’s quoted in “Sweetest Fruit”, and whom Clark admired, and is about "people trying for transcendence, and at least they were taking a big swing or trying for something beautiful". The artist admitted recording over a hundred vocal takes for "Hell is Near": "That was a song that if I didn’t bow before it, it just wouldn’t happen. I sang it 100 times. The chorus is bare … and I have to actually be there to sing it and for it to be real and not throw a bunch of ego or bullshit".

Critical reception

All Born Screaming received a score of 89 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on 23 critics' reviews, which the website categorized as "universal acclaim".