St. Vincent Live Review @ Brudenell Social (Leeds) - 16 Nov 2011

Photo: Simon Godley link

Live Review

There is a strange disconnect between Annie Clark and her audience. As if operating in some invisible bubble, power would seem to be the key to this apparent degree of separation. It exists in the erotic potency of her songs and the strong sexual dynamic she exudes, one which is perversely at odds with her demure, waif-like appearance. Like some sort of force field it holds us at arm's length, whilst we stand only five feet away. "I spent the summer on my back", she confesses to us on the opening line of her opening song "Surgeon" and this startlingly frank revelation sets a scene, a scene of desire, mercy and cruelty. Seventy five minutes later she is slashing her guitar furiously, her controlled energy screaming at us "My face is red from reading your lips."

Annie Clark is 29 years old and she is St. Vincent. Whilst with her on stage there are also two synthesiser players, a drummer and support act Cate Le Bon lends a potent backing voice, there is no doubt that it is Annie Clark who is St. Vincent. Her third album under this name is "Strange Mercy" and it provides the spine to this evening's performance. Its dark, cathartic, imperfect, subversive imagery, is influenced in part by childhood anxieties, Marilyn Monroe, Eric Rohmer and Dylan Thomas, the name of the hospital in which he died having given the band its name. Its music is splintered and fractured, cohesive and coherent. It occupies a space all of its own. The analogue synthesisers provide a glacial swell upon the surface of which Clark's guitar slashes and burns, pirouettes and screams. The purity of her voice seems to be at odds with this torrent of sound, almost in the way that good opposes evil.

Only later, hours after the show has ended in the sonic hailstorm of "Your Lips Are Red", does it feel that a connection can finally be made. With the imaginary barrier between us dismantled and removed, the evening's vivid memories allow the experience to percolate into our sub consciousness as if by some strange osmosis. Stripped of their visual cues all of those sexualised power dynamics can now be seen as passion and creativity. Strange Mercy's title track is no longer cold, but tender in recollection. The initial encore "The Party", from her second album "Actor" is now nothing less than beautiful. Accompanied only by a single keyboard, Clark's voice once dispassionate is now tender, intimate and true. The remarkable cover of The Pop Group's "She Is Beyond Good and Evil" is still frenetic though, but "Champagne Year" with its shades of Leonard Cohen assumes a serene acceptance of life as it is. Clark modestly tells us that she merely makes a living out of telling people what they want to hear. But it is undoubtedly so much more than this. Her music is giving people the power to believe that the St. Vincent experience will linger in the memory long after the event and then in a wholly connected way.

Simon Godley