St. Vincent made the real world her backdrop on 'All Born Screaming'

By Raina Douris, Kimberly Junod

Published August 9, 2024 at 3:30 AM PDT

St. Vincent is a shapeshifter and world-builder. Her previous albums have seen her immersing herself in the gritty New York City of the '70s, playing the role of a pill-dependent housewife or becoming an alien cult leader.

On her latest album, All Born Screaming, St. Vincent seems less concerned with creating a new world and more interested in digging into what it means to be alive in this world.

"To me, this record is about life and death and love, and that’s it," she tells World Cafe during a video call. "That’s all we got."

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St. Vincent self-produced All Born Screaming, and in this session, she talks about her approach and how the album is sort of split into two parts: a darker first half, followed by a more tender second half.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).