When I reviewed St. Vincent's latest album Actor a little while ago, I wrote that it might be the best indie rock record that anyone will release all year and that position only strengthened in the weeks leading up to Annie Clark's headlining stop at the Black Cat. But while I heaped praise on her emotionally precise and technically dazzling vision of social imprisonment, one word that I regret not using for my piece was "violent." Her newest songs aren't just about neurotic people getting passively squeezed by everyday life, but ones attacked to the point where they're too paralyzed by fear to do anything about it. Seeing Clark and her five piece ensemble live was, in many ways, a harsher and immediate realization of the same dip in the road where dread turns to panic. On the surface that doesn't sound like a lot of fun for a Friday night but great and evocative music never makes you feel bad, it just sends your mind racing.
Clark has tried a few different formats for live performing over the years but her band on this tour is far and away the most successful of the bunch. Hired to bring nearly the entirety of Actor to life, they did so more vividly then many of us could have imagined. It's challenging keeping up with Clark's inventive and equally vicious guitar playing which at times sounds like a dozen different instruments. So the band took a different tact: on "Actor Out of Work" her wiry deep bridge playing resembled a half horn/half keyboard instrument that's kind of tricky to explain. Yet her sidemen managed to avoid playing around her talent, instead simply make it bigger while endowing her music with an orchestral quality that seems curiously out of reach for bands who have attempted the same thing with even more players at their disposal.
But when it is St. Vincent on the marquee (or dry erase board in the case of the Black Cat) it all falls on Clark's shoulders and she takes on the burden without hesitation. Conducting with her guitar, everything not only fell into place but took a decidedly different shape on stage. Live "Marrow' has a post-punk groove to go with its blunt clarinet and saxophone, an unexpected dance floor bonus to kick off Memorial Day weekend.
While so many rock musicians seem to zone out and roll their eyes back to go into performance-mode, she refrains from simply playing and throws herself into the full bodied motions of performance; reacting to her own lyrics by cocking her head, looking ashen, and even straightening her neck. This gives the Walt Disney balladry of "Just the Same But Brand New" a more tragic ting. Laced into the predominantly new music set, were a couple of choice cuts from{Marry Me}including a show stopping version of "Your Lips Are Red" which brought to a boil all of Clark's angriest and ear-scratching playing. For that song the crowd just sort of gaped at an act of well, like I said, violence; something her music is never left wanting for at second glance.
I feel a little uneasy about adding a negative note but I just had to air this out. The crowd was strangely loud at odd intervals. If you heard this performance on the NPR simulcast it must have come up a bit on the audio feed. On a guess, I'd have to attribute the noise to the fact that the house lights never went down once the band went on stage. There's a connection in people's minds between dark and silence and that seems to have been broken and, standing next to one of the aforementioned lights, it was a little disorienting having it shining in my face most of the night. The Black Cat crew is usually very sharp so I'm hesitant to cite them for overlooking something important. Given the dazzling backlighting of the St. Vincent ensemble, maybe it was the only way to maintain the spectacle without blinding everybody.
Still, none of my gripes lessen the immense talent on display and, probably more than ever I'm convinced St. Vincent has lasting value to the music community. Giving a captivating performance that acts out and enhances such a provocative group of songs is a rare double punch that most critics will admit they don't expect at live shows. At the very least we look forward to a different sort of enjoyment that takes a few songs to wrap our heads around. But if Annie Clark can build on an album so successfully this time, there's no reason not to believe that it's going to be her goal to do it again the next time around.
by Neal Fersko
[Photos:Ashley Gordon ]