St Vincent – Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Texan singer-songwriter makes falling from grace look good
Words Nick Johnstone
St Vincent is something of a fallen angel. Two years ago, she stood in London’s Barbican, crooning, looping, and delicately picking at a guitar with only a violinist beside her, before headliners Grizzly Bear took the stage. Annie Clark seemed another of those singer-songwriters who dominated the indie world at the time: intimate, hesitant, and reassuringly melodic.
Yet her voice snarled sometimes, her electric guitar often rasped, and as it turned out, this was one of St Vincent’s rare live appearances without a full, plugged-in band.
Fast forward to the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight, and these embers are suddenly ablaze: at the gig’s climax, she strides into the seated audience and, lying prostrate on a row of knees, strummed wildly amid an exhilarating synthetic din. The purity of 2007’s debut album Marry Me is shoved firmly into the background.
Joined by two players of fat vintage synths, one drummer using sample pads, and an occasional backing vocalist, Clark’s armoury of guitars battered through the first four songs, from early 2011 hit ‘Surgeon’ to ‘Chloe in the Afternoon’ (both records from her dark recent album Strange Mercy). Each song collapses into a sketchy maelstrom of frenzied guitars and synths.
The pace changes with ‘Dilettante’, where West Coast harmonies and stunning vocals are underpinned by a casual beat that feels like it is constantly decelerating. A beefy, wah-wah guitar solo deviates satisfyingly from the recorded version.
Midway in and Clark introduces Mark Stewart, of all people, to the stage for a duet on The Pop Group’s ‘(She Is) Beyond Good And Evil’. Clark for her part looks happy to cut loose on the sawing post punk track, while Stewart, clad in khaki and seemingly about seven feet tall, looks hilariously out of place. It’s an interesting diversion, we suppose.
That surreal moment aside, Clark sticks mainly to material from Strange Mercy, but its detailed sampling and quirky instrumental hotchpotch are slightly lost; replaced instead by a swirling, indistinct cloak of electronic sounds.
Almost every tune, though, has the same muscular guitar licks, fizzing through smouldering soundscapes. The brazen funkiness of ‘Cruel’, with its weirdly Abba-like verses, could teach Alison Goldfrapp a thing or two. Likewise ‘Neutered Fruit’ carries that same, distinctive brand of funk.
Smart, heartbreaking power ballads such as ‘Strange Mercy’ give full airing to the less aggressive side of Clark’s voice, and subtly bringback her less punky, poppy resonances, from Fleetwood Mac to Regina Spektor.
After a stupidly drawn-out wait, the evening’s highlight comes with the encores, the first transporting St Vincent to her virginal past, with the stripped-down, shivering beauty of ‘Marry Me’.
The second, ‘Your Lips Are Red’, took her to the other extreme; longing guitar melodies followed by an industrial overload and a spot of posh crowd-surfing from Clark. The lyrics moved from “black cities” to “fair skin”, boiling down the contrasts of light, dark, rough and smooth into a summative climax. Rarely do musicians this gracefully fall from grace.
