The song is the second single from her latest album, All Born Screaming, released in April
St. Vincent brought the pummeling desire of “Flea” — the track from her first self-produced record, All Born Screaming — to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday.
Draped in red light and decked in a tweed skirt-suit, the rock iconoclast opened with the teasing verse “I’m just like a hungry little flea/Jumping on somebody’s warm body/When you start to itch and scratch and scream/Once I’m in, you can’t get rid of me,” before launching into the track’s chaotic chorus: “Drip you in diamonds/Pour you in cream/You will be mine for eternity.”
St. Vincent released All Born Screaming in April, collaborating with Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Josh Freese, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Rachel Eckroth, Mark Guiliana, Stella Mogzawa, David Ralicke, and Cate Le Bon. (Grohl plays drums and Meldal-Johnsen plays bass on “Flea”.)
In a review of her seventh album, Rolling Stone‘s Jon Dolan called the LP “more primal than conceptual,” and “a refreshing change-up among St. Vincent albums.” Dolan added, “Several songs bring to mind the industrial bloodlettings of Nine Inch Nails, the self-emptying operatic art-goth grind of Tori Amos’ 1998 album From the Choir Girl Hotel, the bludgeoning tumult of Nirvana.”
When speaking to Rolling Stone about her latest work, St. Vincent said, “I was going to make a record called All Born Screaming since I was 23,” adding, “But I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t really worthy of the title, ’cause you have to live a lot to be worthy of a title that really says it all. It’s the beauty, it’s the brutality, and it’s all part of the same continuum.”