“Controversial”: St Vincent on the band who easily eclipsed the Eagles
In many ways, St Vincent represents the new ideal of the all-American dream when it comes to rock music. She’s vivacious and space-shifting, multi-faceted and never defined by genre ideals – making her a force to be reckoned with and a second coming to the blazing transcendental stars who passed through the airwaves long before she did.
The singer is all too acutely aware of this bedrock of inspiration from which she has been able to springboard. She has roundly cited everyone from Kate Bush and David Bowie to Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith as providing a guiding light – but this also indirectly highlights her global casting eye, where she can glean sonic source material from every corner of the country and world at large, no matter what background the artist hails from.
This is none more so true than when she focused her attention on her native side of the pond, jumping off from her base in Dallas to take in the music scenes from Los Angeles to New York and all the states in between. However, specifically on the dichotomy contrasting LA and New York, there’s one band in St Vincent’s mind that reigns supreme. She said in a 2021 interview: “Steely Dan is one of my favourite bands ever, which I know is controversial.”
“They were more New York until they came out in the later 70s to California for some of that sweet California grass,” she mused before stating her case that Steely Dan could still easily eclipse the Eagles when it came to the LA scene. She added: “I think it was different in the ‘70s where sounds were a little bit more regional. There’s the New York sound and there was the LA sound of the of the ‘70s, which would be like, I don’t know, the fucking Eagles or something. Like, that wasn’t the entirety of it, but I think of the Eagles as being a sort of a mainstay of ‘70s California music.”
While St Vincent acknowledged the pull of the Laurel Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills providing an artistic muse for the likes of Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne, she noted that: “I’m a big fan of the Joni thing, for sure. I’m not as much of a fan of the Eagles thing.”
In this sense, she feels that a band like Steely Dan could outrun the Eagles, plain and simple, especially due to the former’s “really incisive, cynical, [and] funny lyrics.” With a jazz infusion at their rocking heart, it’s clear that the notion of sonic ingenuity has rubbed off on the ethos of St Vincent and the expansive, experimental sound she seeks to create.
Nevertheless, the singer has opened herself up to a potential mudslinging debate across the rock music heights of the respective East and West American coasts. Which side are you on: the Eagles or Steely Dan? But one thing’s certain – if you’re looking for reinforcement on the Californian battalion, St Vincent is not the one to call.
