St. Vincent made the real world her backdrop on ‘All Born Screaming’

St. Vincent is a shapeshifter and world-builder. Her previous albums have seen her immersing herself in the gritty New York City of the ’70s, playing the role of a pill-dependent housewife or becoming an alien cult leader.

On her latest album, All Born Screaming, St. Vincent seems less concerned with creating a new world and more interested in digging into what it means to be alive in this world.

“To me, this record is about life and death and love, and that’s it,” she tells World Cafe during a video call. “That’s all we got.”

St. Vincent self-produced All Born Screaming, and in this session, she talks about her approach and how the album is sort of split into two parts: a darker first half, followed by a more tender second half.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.