All photos by Jason Ritter.
The tl;dr here? If St. Vincent is playing your city on her current Fear the Future tour, GO!
Although I can’t claim to have been much of a fan prior to last week—I saw St. Vincent on an episode of Gossip Girl several years ago and that plus TMZ-type stuff relating to her personal life was just about all I knew about her—I’d read that the staging of Annie Clark’s current live touring set was something special (I’m a sucker for spectacle) and I’d also noticed that her new MASSEDUCATION album was turning up on many critics’ year-end lists, including that of Jon Pareles of the New York Times, who ranked it as his favorite record of 2017. So I was curious, let’s say. But I didn’t really know what to expect, it was more a situation of “this looks like something interesting to do tonight.” Don’t get me wrong, I fully expected for the show to be really good, or otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered.
The show was much better than “really good.” A lot more. She kinda restored my faith in… America, even, but I’ll explain that in a minute.
As a total “entertainer” package, St. Vincent really has it all. Annie Clark is gorgeous, mysterious, somewhat alien and otherworldly (though seemingly friendly). Her voice is, truly, as good as voices get. She’s a poised, confident, well-groomed presence. Her costumes call to mind Ziggy Stardust meets Wonder Woman. Taken as a whole, her many positive attributes as a performer, the stagecraft and the choreography, the entire presentation was a ten out of ten. Even without a band—Clark sings and plays guitar over a backing track—it was entirely mesmerizing.
But as a guitarist? OMFG. On a scale of 1 to 10, in my estimation, she’s about a 20. The evening before the concert that I attended I had been watching several Jimi Hendrix videos on YouTube, and as I set in the audience the next night, it rather strongly occured to me that she—without the slightest doubt—deserves to be seen as one of the greatest musicians of our time. Imagine the sweet spot creatively triangulated by Kate Bush, Bowie and Robert Fripp and this will give you a ballpark benchmark for the quality on display. (The concert’s unique staging, which began on the left side of the stage with the curtain drawing wider for each number, and used video projections to great effect, also called to mind Laurie Anderson.)
No really, Annie Clark is one of the single best guitarists I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Her concentration and hand-eye coordination was almost superhuman. It was utterly mesmerizing to watch her hands and the way she wrangled her signature self-designed Ernie Ball guitars. Like someone making sculpture out of electricity. I’ve honestly never witnessed anything like it. She is a Hendrix or Fripp-level guitarist, believe it. The performance was unbelievably accomplished. Mathematically precise. Watching her soloing was like witnessing someone doing differential calculus in their head, and then expressing this on a guitar. It was truly awe-inspiring in the most profound sense.
I was so uplifted by this concert experience that it occured to me, while it was in still in progress, that even in a world of complete and utter shit, Trump, Brexit, and just Tide pod-eating dummies everywhere, Annie Clark represents the exact opposite of all that. This terribly advanced artist was enough to make me believe that maybe the human race maybe hadn’t met its logical dead end. Additionally there’s something undeniably American about Clark and if you contrast her obvious intelligence with say, the worst of what this country has to offer, it seems possible that higher (r)evolutionary mutation might still save the day. Look I don’t want to overstate the case, but sitting in the audience, slack-jawed at what I was witnessing, I felt like I was looking at the… er… genetic contours of the county in a more accurate manner. Does that make sense?
I felt, for the first time in a long time, that things are going to get better again. Can you imagine getting THAT from a gig? In 2018?
And I still feel that way. If you get a chance to see St. Vincent live, GO!!!
St. Vincent plays the Hollywood Palladium Thursday night.
Performing “Los Ageless” on ‘Ellen’