Complex and cerebral is natural state for St Vincent

Singer St Vincent looks ahead after a difficult year, writes Anthony Carew.

ANNIE CLARK had a bad 2010. She doesn’t want to talk too much about it, but just know it was a drag. It was the Year of the Tiger, says Clark, the endlessly charming 29-year-old who records as St Vincent. ‘‘And it turned out to be one of the worst years of my life. Simply because of that natural progression of things: death. In the face of this, I started wondering what good really was, making these compositions that were just so heady, so purely cerebral. I wanted to make music that meant more to me to play; to sing songs that were closer to my heart.’’

In 2010, Clark’s itinerary included a spot in Wellington as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Of course, the songs Clark ended up writing are heady and cerebral. It comes naturally to the Oklahoma-born, Texas-raised, New York-based Clark; a childhood guitar shredder, adolescent jazz aficionado, and musicschooled virtuoso turned solo act.

After stints playing in robed big-band The Polyphonic Spree and the live band for Sufjan Stevens, Clark released her first St Vincent LP, Marry Me, in 2007. The record introduced her as an artist fond of twisted, complex

‘I went way into this space of: ‘‘Oh, I want to be a serious musician. I want to be composerly. I want to flex my cerebral chops.’’ ’ ANNIE CLARK, AKA ST VINCENT

compositions masquerading simple pop songs.

She pushed that further on 2009’s Actor. ‘‘I went way into this space of: ‘Oh, I want to be a serious musician. I want to be composerly. I want to flex my cerebral chops,’ ’’ Clark says. ‘‘Everything about it was theoretical, right to the very end. I was writing on virtual instruments; I never touched a guitar, or anything so tactile; all I touched was a MIDI keyboard plugged into a computer ... it was all so theoretical, all so conceptual.’’

That extended to Actor’s theme, which explored the pantomime of performance. ‘‘To me, there’s nothing more admirable, but also more bad, this archetype of artistic endeavour, than an actor’s work,’’ Clark says. ‘‘That image, to me, is like a metaphor for the whole artistic mindset.’’

But after entertaining the conceptual and cerebral, Clark wanted her third LP, 2011’s Strange Mercy, to be more fun to play. ‘‘If music isn’t satisfying in its most immediate form, then, really, it’s just not satisfying.’’

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So, Strange Mercy is a little louder, more brash and bold; an album juxtaposing black comedy with trauma. It was made with an imposed ‘‘technology detox’’, Clark ‘‘putting the computer away’’ and recording often live on to analogue tape.

‘‘I wasn’t peering screen,’’ she beams.

‘‘I was sitting down with a guitar, playing, writing. Like a writer. I hadn’t done that before! So much of my creative life – of my adult life, period – has been spent staring at a screen. That’s not a cranky lament – I think technology’s amazing, I know there’s no going back, and am not necessarily nostalgic about the days of less technology, exactly. But I do sometimes wonder: ‘How many hours of my life, since ’98, when I first started using the internet, have I spent staring at a computer?’

‘‘And if I truly start about it, and add it horrifying.’’

into to think up, it’s St Vincent plays Wellington’s San Francisco Bathhouse on Monday.

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