ST. VINCENT - Daddy's Home LP

Label: Loma Vista

Using her father's return from jail for white-collar crime as a jumping-off point, Annie Clark explores moral grey areas on songs that are as diffuse as her past few albums were taut.

Her musical world-building remains as impressive as ever: Drawing on early-'70s sounds introduced to her by her father, she pays homage to a more permissive time as she traces the best and worst things carried through the generations.

Clark's version of the '70s is filled with so many allusions it should have footnotes; alongside the bubbling Wurlitzers and Mellotrons, she name-drops John Cassavetes and Candy Darling.

Like the albums of the era it was inspired by, Daddy's Home takes time to unfold in listeners' imaginations.

It's much more of a mood than anything else in her body of work, but its hazy reconciliation of the good and bad of the past makes it as an uncompromising statement from her as ever.