St. Vincent
“Strange Mercy”

This is my favorite song on an album I like quite a bit. If music is just a series of climaxes — which I think it is, for the most part — then this is some good music. I tend not to listen to lyrics very much, which is kind of weird, but it just sort of dawned on me today what Annie Clark’s lyrics are saying:

Oh little one, I know you’ve been tired for a long, long time.
And oh little one I ain’t been around a little while.
But when you see me, wait.
Oh little one your Hemingway jawline looks just like his.
Our father in exile.
For God only knows how many years.
But when you see him, wait.
Through double pain,
I’ll be with you lost boys.
Sneaking out where the shivers won’t find you.

Oh little one, I’d tell you good news that I don’t believe.
If it would help you sleep.
Strange mercy.

If I ever meet that dirty policeman who roughed you up.
No I don’t know what.
If I ever meet that dirty policeman who roughed you up.

I’ll be with you lost boys,
Sneaking out where the shivers won’t find you.

Now I don’t know anything about fathers in exile and Hemingway jawlines. And I don’t know about what police are up to. But this song seems particularly apposite for the time being.

I know there’s a certain kind of irony in championing a woman for being strong and independent in entirely expectation-breaking ways, and then also saying you like most the song where she expresses maybe a maximally conventional mode of relating to men — but, I think also that’s not what’s happening in the song. You could read it as the author offering succor to a wounded man, shoehorning her into the role of mother or nurse. The male-idealizing “Hemingway jawline” line and the “through double pain, / I’ll be with you lost boys” lines appear to fit into a pattern of behavior that’s recognizably passive and admiring of male vigor.

But then that climax. Because when she says, “No I don’t know what”, you do know what and exactly what she’s going to do to that policeman. And I think, in combination with a lot of the above, “Strange Mercy” actually expresses a fairly complicated way of the author’s relating to physical struggle. Because while she’s not there, she is there, a presence in absence and a powerful one. The “strange mercy” is having the spiritual strength to evince change even when you know you’re not physically powerful enough to do it yourself — solidarity. It’s a strange mercy to dispense and receive, but beautiful to hear.