March Madness, Day 4: St. Vincent's new and probably career-defining tour rolls through Atlanta. An unbelievable, incredible performance, but before talking about that, let's first consider the opening act by Brooklyn's Noveller.
We've seen Noveller before - a long, long time ago, nearly four years ago to the day, when she opened for Girl In A Coma and Xiu Xiu at the Drunken Unicorn. We liked her then, and fortunately her sound and approach have not changed. Noveller is looper Sarah Lipstate, who performs solo guitar compositions using a loop repeater and other pedal effects. The resulting sound is highly cinematic - she and her loop pedal would probably make a great film score, and her set sounded like the score of an imaginary film.
I wasn't sure how a rowdy, Saturday night audience for St. Vincent would react to Noveller's somewhat ambient sound, but they were in fact quite receptive, appropriately quiet during the quiet passages, and cheering in appreciation during the crescendos and musical climaxes. The crowd cheered as soon as she picked up a bow but before even applying it to the strings of her guitar, reminding me of Dogen's expression that a good horse runs faster just at the sight of the whip. The audience, very much including myself, enjoyed Noveller's experimental set; in fact, judging by the audience response, you'd have thought that they came out last night specifically for a Noveller concert.
Noveller played a 35 minute set, and it took another 35 minutes before St. Vincent took the stage. But from almost the first note of her amazing set, Annie Clark let the audience know they were in for a real treat, a full-blown musical extravaganza of the finest order.
This is our fourth time seeing St. Vincent, and it's worth recalling the progression of appearances to comprehend the trajectory of her career. Our first exposure to St. Vincent was her performance at a sold-out and crowded Earl during Rocktober 2011. She commanded a larger venue, Variety Playhouse, for her next appearance in Atlanta on May 19, 2012, and returned to Atlanta during Rocktober 2012, performing with David Byrne as part of the Love This Giant tour at the Cobb Energy Center. She obviously picked up a lot from Byrne during that tour, as, among other things, her performance last night incorporated a lot of choreography and stagecraft similar to the Love This Giant show.
The late Kosho Uchiyama once said that the secret to living a fulfilling life is to completely throw ourselves into everything that we do, vividly living and experiencing each moment of our life as it occurs, holding nothing back. Annie Clark seems to be following this advice, as last night she held nothing back, giving everything she had during her entire 90-minute, full-throttle set, more so than at any of the previous performances I've seen. This was not only the best, most enjoyable concert by St. Vincent I've seen, it was one of the best, most enjoyable concerts I've ever attended, period. A strong contender, if not a shoe-in, for Concert of the Year.
Where to start? Visually, the show was amazing. She didn't need to employ any multi-media effects, no film projections or slideshows, but just using some relatively low-key choreographed moves around the stage (no backup dancers needed) and creative use of standard lighting effects (changing colors and occasional strobes, but no blinding spotlights in the audiences' faces), she created an amazing, unexpected, visual spectacle - unexpected because it was so amazing, and amazing because it was so unexpected.
Glamour has always been a part of the St. Vincent persona, but usually in a low-key, indie-rock way. In the indie aesthetic, the band on stage is usually indistinguishable from the audience in dress and appearance - it generally looks like the band consists of random members of the audience who just so happened to have wandered onto the stage. Annie Clark is a striking-looking woman and probably incapable of blending into a crowd, but while she always looked good on stage wearing her leggy outfits, she always acted as if she preferred that you didn't notice and instead confined the glamour mostly to album cover and publicity shots, and usually with a self-deprecatory and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
On this tour, she seems to have accepted that the audience's attention is going to be on her anyway, so she's upped the ante with a new, striking, silver-blonde hairstyle and lots of dramatic eye makeup, and vamping more on stage, alternately acting like everything from a torch singer to a riot grrrl to a robotic mannequin and back to her more unaffected, natural persona. About mid-way through the set, she slinked up and down a three-tier stand, the only prop on stage, sometimes courageously and conspicuously standing alone at the very top like a confident rock star, and other times seductively writhing up and down the levels or, during the sensuous I Prefer Your Love, sitting back like a Vegas lounge act.
Everything sounded great. Clark's voice clearly rose above the band, even during some of the difficult, higher-pitch passages, and the overall mix of instruments sounded terrific. Her band, a drummer and two keyboards, were the same musicians who supported her during her 2012 Variety Playhouse appearance.
The set opened with Rattlesnake and Digital Witness from her new, eponymous album, followed by Cruel from her previous album, Strange Mercy, and then Birth in Reverse from St. Vincent. The set relied heavily on the new songs, but she included a lot of the older favorites, too (notably Cheerleader and Year of the Tiger, among others).
You can hear a lot of the David Byrne influence in the new song Digital Witness in particular - the song sounds like it was written specifically for the brass-band arrangements of the Love This Giant tour. But beyond just the sound, the showmanship of that tour and Byrne's characteristically quirky sense of humor seems to have rubbed off on Clark as well, as many of those choreographed moves seemed designed to put a goofy smile on your face. Despite all the glamour and choreogrpahy and stage sets, Clark seemed to be telling us to relax and not take any of this too seriously - just kick back and enjoy the show.
And, man, can she play guitar! If there were any doubts about Annie Clark being just a singer or another pretty face, she put those doubts to rest by repeatedly shredding her way through some ferocious guitar passages, most notably during the song Surgeon but throughout the set as well. In fact, she's such a precise guitarist that it might be easy to overlook how well she was playing - without any sloppiness to overcome, there were no errors to correct, no portions that were played better (or worse) than any others. This isn't a complaint or a criticism, but I wondered at times if others in the audience were appreciating her guitar proficiency outside of the obvious solo passages, as she made it all look so easy.
She ended her set with Bring Me Your Loves from the new album and Northern Lights from Strange Mercy, followed by a cover of Big Black's punk-rock thrasher Krokodil, her set closer from 2012 as well.
She changed outfits for her encore set, which started with a quiet, solo version of Strange Mercy performed from the top of the on-stage staircase, before joining the rest of her band on the stage floor for Chloe In the Afternoon, among other songs.
What else is there to say? This is obviously St. Vincent's finest hour, a justifiably confident performer playing at the very top of her game. The performances during this tour right now are what Annie Clark will be remembered for years from now, unless - and here's an almost scary thought - she comes up with something even bigger and better. A lot of effort obviously went into these performances, and hopefully this tour will launch St. Vincent into the top of the independent musician ranks. It couldn't happen to a more deserving artist.
Update: Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a good article on St. Vincent for The New Yorker.
Update: Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a good article on St. Vincent for The New Yorker.
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