The Underground of Happiness

Meet Sabina Sciubba , Paris resident but with Rome, Munich, Nice, Hamburg and New York in her backstory. Her debut solo album (she previously fronted electro pop provocateurs Brazilian Girls, who were neither Brazilian nor girls, apart from herself) finds her musing on the modern world charmingly, humourously and yet sincerely, to mostly minimal backing. As an early calling card, ‘Viva l’amour’ rattles along at couldn’t-give-a-fuck pace and beguiles with deceptively simple and thrilling back-to-front vocals. ‘Long distance love’ develops a slightly more stately, although insistent, guitar-driven rhythm which rolls very pleasingly until a coda completely shifts the goalposts, using train whistle whoo-hoo backing vocals with stunning results. The song appears to be a cautionary tale about the global village and its isolating effect on our hearts and minds, but you’ll be hard pushed not to swing your hips to the beat. Perhaps this is the point – we’re here now together in the sa...

The great St Vincent will be playing in Dublin on November 13th, at The Workman's Club , as part of a 12-date European jaunt. In the meantime, her new album Strange mercy comes out on 4AD on Sept 9th. Her band for the tour will be Toko Yasuda (Blonde Redhead, Enon) on mini moog, Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright) on drums and Daniel Mintseris (Marianne Faithful) on keyboards. Exciting eh? Any excuse (none needed really) for some St Vincent video action. Here are three Take-Away Shows shot by Vincent Moon in Paris for La Blogotheque in 2007. Perched sideways on a railing on the street and still pulling off an intricate guitar pattern - what a woman she is. I love the way she eschews the French kissing-on-the-cheek etiquette there, entering the apartment (you ain't kissing me...). But as for St Vincent reclining on a bed purring " Marry me ", the less I say about that, the better, I think. And apart from the woman's musical (let's agree t...