“I was going for a sound where it’s like, ‘Is this person virtuosic, or do they totally suck?’ That’s kind of where I live”: St. Vincent on channeling Neil Young and embracing a less-is-more approach to guitar solos

St. Vincent's discography is full of moments where her distinct guitar playing shines. However, on some tracks from new album All Born Screaming, the artist goes back to basics and adopts a less is more approach to guitar solos.

“I take a kind of solo in the chorus that reminds me of listening to Butthole Surfers in Dallas in 1997,” she says when talking about her track Flea in the latest issue of Total Guitar.

“I was going for a sound where it’s like… wrong? Like, ‘Is this person virtuosic, or do they totally suck?’ That’s kind of where I live. Like, one of the great guitar solos, Neil Young’s Down By The River is, what, one note? So it’s just in the hands of the beholder, I think.” She laughs: “That’s not an expression!”

This doesn't mean that the album is short of solos, however. In So Many Planets, St Vincent rips a solo that the artist describes as her “love letter to second-wave ska and 2 Tone Records.

“I thought I was totally aping The Specials’ Man At C&A, and then I went back and listened to it and realised, ‘Oh, no I wasn’t.’ Usually when you reference things, you’re only really referencing your memory of the feeling that you had when you last heard something, you’re not literally referencing it.”

In a 2014 interview with Salon, St Vincent talked about her approach to crafting each song's guitar parts: “In the same way that I think that I really make pop music, I don't think of it as pushing the guitar lexicon. I'm thinking, 'How do I make something that's interesting to my ears?'

“And I have some restless ears, and I now have a fractured attention span because I'm like living in the modern world. I have a more fractured attention span than ever, so I'm, like, how do I make this sound interesting to myself. I have to trust that if this sounds cool to me, it might sound cool to somebody else.”

For more St. Vincent – who also discusses how a gift from Mike McCready helped change her relationship with the Stratocaster – plus new interviews with Slash and Kerry King, pick up issue 384 of Total Guitar at Magazines Direct.