St Vincent: 10 of the best

1. Paris is Burning

St Vincent’s debut album Marry Me is dense with ideas, sometimes wonderful, often impregnable. The ornate arrangements of Annie Clark’s early works may have reflected her state of mind and certainly her environment; she is one of eight siblings from a large Catholic family from the suburbs of Dallas, and it was from within this familial tumult that she began her internalised musical explorations, always with the aid of digital software. “I’ve been recording on computer-based systems since I was 13,” she told Pitchfork in 2008. “My songwriting process is sort of inextricably integrated with technology.” Despite the modernity, Clark somehow pulls a baroque pop gem out of nowhere with Paris is Burning, a song as effulgent as the belle époque itself, with a cascading waltz outro . Named after the 1990 documentary about New York drag queens, the song may have been written – or at least started – in Paris itself, which Clark passed through at various times playing with both Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree. Footage exists of her performing the song somewhat tentatively with just an acoustic guitar outside Le Trianon in Pigalle in September 2007, when someone at La Blogotheque convinced her it would be a good idea. The raven-locked, gamine former hair model in the clip is a world away from the strident, shock-haired androgyne that stormed to pole position in so many end-of-year album polls in 2014.

2. Actor Out of Work

St Vincent’s second album Actor marked her first musical partnership with producer John Congleton, a fruitful relationship that has seen them work together on all subsequent St Vincent albums, including Love This Giant with David Byrne. Actor Out of Work is a fine example of this chemistry, a runaway juggernaut of a song that gathers momentum as it rolls down the hill. Set against all this frantic energy is Clark’s amiable delivery, which so often disguises a mischievous wink, or belies the lyrical sting in the tail. The video for the song captures this duality, as she sits in a casting role like some demure Marina Abramović, inexplicably reducing the poor thesps across from her to tears just by looking at them. The first of a number of films made with Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey, it not only introduces us to the smiling assassin, but also alerts us to a somewhat tenebrous sense of humour. Interestingly it was the promo for Actor out of Work that first made Byrne aware of St Vincent. “When I met Annie I complimented her on how disturbing her video was,” he said in an interview when the pair were promoting Love This Giant.

3. Marrow

Having toured the world extensively both as session musician and as a solo artist, St Vincent’s alt-rock credentials were already well-established when Actor came out in 2009, but it’s her meanderings outside of the indie heartland that make her such a compelling artist. Marrow is perhaps the first successful transplant, a crossover alternative narrative with a pulsating dance heart. As well as producing, Congleton programmes the drum sequences, and on Marrow the conflation of the bass-drum kick with the pounding throb of the bass is arresting beyond compare, at least up to that point. Working with a loose concept, Clark based each song on Actor on scenes from a movie, with Marrow channelling the moment Dorothy meets the Wizard. “I felt like I wanted to create something that was Technicolor, was visual as much as musical,” Clark said. “And also lyrically – this person wishing they had a spine made of iron – it’s sort of along the thematic lines of The Wizard of Oz.”

4. Cruel

For her third album Clark upped sticks to Seattle to write and record, an isolating experience that did wonders for her productivity. She also dispensed with the computer for the first time during the writing process, making for a more coherent and less cluttered listening experience. On Strange Mercy she seems to be railing against the conformity of contemporary America throughout. “When I was young, coach called me the tiger,” Clark reminisces on Year of the Tiger, while on Cheerleader she claims to have “seen America with no clothes on”, and doesn’t “want to be a cheerleader no more”. Cruel appears to be a hate letter to domesticity once one has left high school, and with its lyrics about expectations placed on “bodies”, it might even be a call to arms to tie up the Fallopian tubes. It marches almost militarily, as a ghostly, gossamery refrain wafts over it almost ignoring the moving structure below; perhaps it represents the disconnect of fulfilling one’s duty whilst inhabiting the dreamlike reality of a life on Prozac. The anguished cry of “cruel” in the choruses further exemplifies this feeling of domiciliary entrapment. Where complicated ideas abounded previously, now she was taking them and making them look easy.

5. Surgeon

What do St Vincent and Robbie Williams have in common? Not a lot, although both created songs based around Nancy Sinatra’s James Bond theme You Only Live Twice. Where Williams took the sample and looped it on Millennium, Annie Clark goes some place completely different, culminating in a wild pitch-bending Bobby Sparks solo that calls to mind a crazy séance where all the gods of funk are dragged into the same room at once. Another spirit called upon is Marilyn Monroe, whose diary entry prompted the slightly modified refrain: “best finest surgeon / come cut me open”. The isolation theme with the help of Monroe – the celebrated, tragic femme fatale and poster girl for the tortured soul – is perhaps best explored on this sublime track. Clark, for the first time, presents an overtly sexual persona on Strange Mercy, while there’s always an underlying narrative of depression if you dare to delve deeper. With the line “I spent the summer on my back,” she somehow manages to cleverly combine the two.

6. Lusitania (with Andrew Bird)

Some of St Vincent’s best moments have been collaborative. These include a soon to be released track with the Chemical Brothers, a recent 16-minute rendition of Drill with post-punk heroes Wire in Chicago, and most famously as Kurt Cobain’s stand-in when Nirvana were recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Perhaps less edgy than any of these, though more gorgeous, is her alt-country duet with Andrew Bird, on his 2012 Break It Yourself album. Bird says the song actually took him up to three years to write after the line, “you’re the one who sunk my Lusitania” popped into his head. Collaborating with Clark was the easy part. “I’ve known Annie for years,” said Bird, “so I asked her to sing because the second verse felt like it was a different point of view. She gets the more upbeat point of view. It felt like static electricity between two people.” Indeed, the blending of the two voices is heavenly.

7. Who (with David Byrne)

The other St Vincent alliance of note is the one with David Byrne. Byrne – having worked with everyone from Brian Eno to Marisa Monte – is no stranger to the collaboration himself, though when the pairing was announced it still caused a flutter. It made sense of course: both are residents of New York, both were art school dropouts, and both have a penchant for fearless avant garde experimentation but within the parameters of commercial pop music. They worked within boundaries, this time writing all parts solely for brass, with Congleton adding percussion after the tracks were laid down. Most successful is lead track Who, a dogged funk track with both parties imprinting their distinctive personalities without it turning into a push-me-pull-you power struggle. Love This Giant thrived because of the total commitment entered into by both parties – Byrne and Clark quickly dispensed with any notions of “side-project” and toured the record together for a whole year after it was finished.

8. Birth in Reverse

When Annie Clark released promotional pictures of herself for her fourth solo record, fans were surprised to see her with a towering white coiffure. The look suggested an alien alter-ego, yet the eponymous title suggested unshakable self confidence and an awareness that whatever St Vincent is had been fully distilled into the new record, with everything that came before mere preprandial hors d’oeuvres. The live shows were a revelation too, featuring Clark in dazzling blue eyeshadow like a Warhol screenprint animated, with stunning choreographed routines between her and her onstage foil, bassist Toko Yasuda. Her desire to make people dance and “blur the boundaries between a rock show and the theatre” had been fully realised, especially on Birth in Reverse. The critics were in a froth, though the opening line of the track seemed to cause disproportionate consternation. “Oh what an ordinary day,” she sang, “take out the garbage, masturbate.” The rest of the song, for what it’s worth, is brilliant.

9. Digital Witness

If a teenage Clark had embraced technology so wholeheartedly, then the adult Clark appeared to be recoiling from it. Though neither preachy nor prescriptive, Digital Witness sees her observing the practices of social media, the confessionals and the frequent status updates, in puzzlement and wonder. “If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me,” she sings, “What’s the point of doing anything?” It’s less judgmental than it is empathetic, though you sense the intensely private singer is bothered that people give so much of themselves away in the internet age. Musically it’s one of the finest moments of her career, harking back to Paisley Park-era Prince, but with a delectable groove that sounds like the future. Certainly any comparisons with the Purple One are not inappropriate or outlandish – this is after all an artist who can stand shoulder to shoulder with David Byrne. St Vincent shows, like Prince shows are astonishing, the difference being that she is the one making the relevant and revelatory records in the present.

10. Prince Johnny

St Vincent the album features several narratives based on true stories, including the time she took off all her clothes and attempted to convene with nature, only to be chased away by a serpent (Rattlesnake). The other notable true story is Prince Johnny, about a New York drag queen friend whom she evidently tried to snort a piece of the Berlin Wall with. It’s an ambient and luxurious ballad, affectionate and gorgeously melodious. “Prince Johnny, you’re kind, but do be careful,” she sings with an air of caution, and you detect tragedy is never far away, and might well be waiting around the corner. During live sets of the song, Clark would hand her guitar to someone, then lay prostrate across the stage like Thomas Chatterton, the doomed teenage poet. Or maybe the sacrificial pose was symbolic of the purging of religious guilt, a renaissance Christ complete with bleeding heart sewn into the breast of her costume. Whatever the meaning, St Vincent certainly seems freed from the shackles of conventionality, a boon for the rest of us, as her oeuvre is as inventive and curious and intriguing as that of anyone else working today.