Deciphering St. Vincent
By: James Edwards
September 3, 2009 – Toronto, Canada
Annie Clark presents a bit of a challenge to casual listeners and hardened critics alike. While the music itself is as accessible as finely crafted indie pop can get, getting a firm handle on the way she effortlessly traverses tone from rawk chick to faux-mawkish charm is an essential part of appreciating the treasures the former Polyphonic Sprite has to offer. And as much as a string of sold-out concert dates and an appearance on one of CBC's flagship radio programs, Q, convey the degree to which Canada has been charmed by Clark, she seems to be falling for the Great White North in equal fashion.
"Oh, I love Toronto," she says, adding an enthusiastic appreciation for the interior of her hotel with an is-she-joking? underline of humor that doesn't betray
"While I've been here in Canada, the press has been so thoughtful and accommodating," she says. "I don't mind the promotional side of things at all, especially when it goes this well."
After gigs at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern and Hamilton's Rock Club, Clark, as always touring under her St. Vincent moniker, is off to Europe for several dates before returning stateside. Come November, she's set to support fellow Brooklynites Grizzly Bear on a full European tour that covers the UK to Denmark over 19 dates. On how it came about, she smiles and keeps it simple: "I'm not sure. They just asked me."
As a self-described technophile, Clark says she never leaves for the road without her iPhone or laptop, although her true fetishizing is saved for the formidable arsenal of gear for her on-stage battles.
"I'm kind of obsessive about my sound boards and effects," she says, with a special affection for her newly-acquired Eclipse pedal. "They help make songs like 'Marrow' quite fun to play which the audience seems to really get into. It's got that unique groove and I kind of get to rock out on it."
From August 3 to 7, Clark got to rock-out a bit more on her own terms as she played co-host on Sirius XMU, where she performed "stripped-down" versions of some tracks from her second album, Actor, with her keyboardist/woodwind player Evan Smith, as well picking her own playlist and taking part in multiple interviews.
"I enjoyed it. I think we had a nice chat," she says, emphasizing the last word in almost self-parodying fashion.
One the process of writing Actor, Clark notes that, in stark contrast to her first record, Marry Me, on which she had been carrying much of the material around for years, the songs on her second album were more or less fresh.
"I wrote most of it coming off of a long tour for Marry Me, which probably helped the material a lot. I find it difficult to write on the road, so maybe that had a lot to do with it."
So much has been made of Actor's "cinematic" sound and its borderline elegiac qualities, as well as the fact that Clark cultivated her cinephilia during recording with copious amounts of Criterion Collection rentals and Woody Allen binges (her favorite is Stardust Memories) that it almost seems impossible to separate the album from such pre-conceived conceptions.
"The cinematic quality is something that comes up quite a bit in interviews," she says, "but I think that stems from how much emphasis I put on that aspect. It was important to me."
Now, while it would be downright impossible for even the hardest of hearts to remain unwooed by the coquettish way she describes newly-added drummer Josh Brant ("just delightful") or the response she has for an English journalist determined to paint her as some kind of malicious vixen ("whatever, you can have your anime pin-up girl"), the most endearing quality of Clark and her music may lie in a grand statement that, while undoubtedly sincere, seems primed for the David Byrne school of earnest irony:
"After everything, there really is nothing in the world more fun to me than being in the studio or performing music."
Video: "Actor Out Of Work" by St. Vincent
