St. Vincent courts greatness at the Riverside Theater show
Squiggling sushi, a phone made of cake, a woman’s bare legs (with black heels) wiggling out from a TV set.
There was a feast of hard-to-forget images at art rocker St. Vincent’s Milwaukee show Friday. But there’s one visual St. Vincent — birth name Annie Clark — created that’s really burned into my brain.
During “Birth in Reverse,” Clark — sporting a pink leather one-piece and thigh-high pink boots — ripped into one of those twisted, spidery guitar solos that sound like her, and only her, on a sleek, jagged guitar she designed herself.
Strands of jet black hair fell in front of her face, and stark white lights from the floor and purple spotlights from above cast her in striking shadows.
For that second, Clark’s silhouette with that distinct guitar, the confidence of her body language — she struck an uncanny resemblance to Prince.
I don’t suspect it was by design, and it’s possible I was the only one at a nearcapacity Riverside Theater who drew that conclusion. But during Clark’s 90minute set, I couldn’t help thinking of Prince, and David Bowie, and Beyoncé — seismic artists who seized the imagination with inspired performance art, in the service of emotionally stirring songs that captured the human spirit.
There were moments Friday where Clark was an equal in their orbit.
The meticulously plotted show began with Clark standing far stage right in stark white light, hands behind her back, legs crossed, a black curtain covering much of the stage, as she sweetly sang an early track, the tragically naive “Marry Me,” over the lush sounds of a string section. You couldn’t see the string section or any other live musicians over the course of the show — or cords for that matter.
Across a few songs, the curtain and tightly composed Clark moved slightly to the left, with nothing else appearing on stage aside from the occasional roadie dressed like a ninja. A distinct vibe was established, but over time the visuals took on a higher purpose.
All 10 songs in the opening 40-minute set — set chronologically from 2007’s “Marry Me” album to 2014’s selftitled LP — were drastically re-imagined. “Cheerleader” married a crooner’s lament with Nine Inch Nails-style industrial grime, while “Cruel” hollowed out the original’s arrangement, adding new percussive and electronic textures to Clark’s one-of-a-kind guitar riffs.
The second set, a front-to-back performance of St. Vincent’s latest and arguably greatest new album, “Masseduction,” more closely mirrored the original recordings, accompanied by vivid video visuals that complemented the songs’ grandeur.
One performance was a letdown: “Young Lovers,” set to uninspired lightspeed footage a la “Star Wars,” and Clark refraining from reaching the climactic high note. And while the “Masseduction” set was technically bolder by design, it also felt a bit more basic. Clark was so captivating in that first set, but here, she was largely relinquishing the spotlight to the visuals.
The night’s most human, and winning moment, was “New York,” or really what happened before the song. After a cute bit in which Clark suggested the ballad would have been called “Milwaukee” if not for the extra syllable, Clark went into the performance, then abandoned it halfway through after forgetting the third verse.
“For you Milwaukee, I will (expletive) up a song, and I will fight to rectify it,” Clark said, inspiring wild cheers before and after a superb do-over.
St. Vincent showed Friday she really could become a legendary artist like Prince, Bowie or Beyoncé. But at that moment, fans relished the rare glimpse of the woman behind the magic.