Interview with St. Vincent

Sleepy Annie Clark calls from a noisy place in New York (but aren’t they all?) to be interviewed, and she is entitled to be sleepy, for it surely keeps one up nights staring at all that destiny ahead.

Annie performs under the name St. Vincent because that was the hospital in which dear doomed Dylan Thomas succumbed. Onstage, she can be too fey by half or deliver herself of a shredding guitar solo Dewey Finn would be happy to extol in the School of Rock. Conservatory trained but neither a reader nor writer of music, a fashionista who was content to be just another robe in The Polyphonic Spree, Annie creates alchemy from her contradictions.

Only two albums into her own career, this ridiculously talented composer is on the verge of something, and whether the result is gold or lead you may discern for yourself when she returns to the Magic City October 5.





BW: You’re coming back to Birmingham on a bill with Andrew Bird, playing the soundstage at WorkPlay, so that should be a pretty good show.

AC: Yeah, I’m excited. I think I actually saw a film at WorkPlay one time, because, you know, working on the first record [Marry Me], I worked a lot with Brian Teasley [of Man or Astroman?] in Birmingham. I did a lot of recording there. I know the town a little bit, so I’m excited to be coming back.

BW: Have people here bugged you to death about seeing our hospital named after St. Vincent?

AC: Oh, when we were recording, we would drive back in the wee hours of the morning, and we’d drive past St. Vincent’s Hospital every single time, because Brian lived over near Bottletree.

BW: You’ve toured with a lot of groups — have you ever gone out on the road with Brian’s band?

AC: No, I never did. I toured with Brian when we both played in The Polyphonic Spree, but I kind of started doing my own thing a little bit after Man or Astroman? slowed down doing their thing.

BW: [A recording software query ensues.] Why do you like Apple’s Logic Pro better than Pro Tools?

AC: Here’s the thing. Actually, I don’t like Logic Pro better than Pro Tools for some things. I recorded the record in Pro Tools, but for arranging. Logic just has a better sound base for all the MIDI stuff. So I use Logic as an arrangement tool. You can set the Sibelius [software for musical notation] better and print out scores for other musicians. So I composed in GarageBand and Logic, but we recorded it in ProTools. And if you’re a nerd, you’ll call ProTools GrowTools.

BW: As far as arranging goes, how did you ever manage to get into Berklee [College of Music, Boston] without being able to read or write music?

AC: [laughs] Actually, the tag line they coined for their sort of ad campaign while I was at Berklee was “There’s nothing conservatory about it.” So I’m sure a lot more people than me got out of there never quite knowing how to read or write music.

BW: The new album, Actor, was inspired in part by Disney themes. Is there any chance you’d ever write a song inspired by a Warner Brothers cartoon?

AC: It would be kind of sound effect-y.

BW: But you’re a fan of quirky instrumentation, and if you listen to Carl Stalling’s scores for the old Warner cartoons, you can’t beat that for quirk.

AC: Yeah, those are really, um---I think the cool thing is, when you’re a kid, you get exposed to really sophisticated music themes through cartoons, early cartoons. I don’t know about SpongeBob or whatever, that’s cool, Flaming Lips or whatever, but I don’t know about modern cartoons because I don’t watch them. Those old Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons---if you wanted to be cynical about it you could call it hokey, but I think it’s really beautifully composed music.

BW: And they had to perform those cues live.

AC: Right, yeah. Imagine the budget for a cartoon.

BW: When you were a kid, what was the first computer you had?

AC: It was a PC.

BW: Was it a Dell? Tell the truth.

AC: Oh, because I’m from Texas? Yeah, probably. It was a PC and I ran a Layla interface and Cakewalk for audio.

BW: And what was the first guitar you played?

AC: It was a Peavey Raptor, which was the kind of guitar that comes in a kit with the box and the amplifier and the cables.

BW: Is that a three-quarter scale guitar?

AC: I don’t know if it is or not, to be honest. I was twelve, so it’s like when you’re little and you play basketball and you don’t realize that you’re using a tiny child-sized ball.

BW: Well, you’re a extraordinarily good guitar player. We particularly like your solo version of “I Dig A Pony” that’s online and we wonder how the Beatles fit into your musical worldview.

AC: You know, I kind of got something backwards. I started listening to the Beatles when I was about 13 or 14. And people don’t just have Beatles phases, it’s like Beatles lifetimes. The Beatles isn’t something you listen to in high school and then put away and listen to once in a while nostalgically. It’s like something you can keep discovering and keep discovering as you grow and grow. I love the Beatles, I love Wings, I love Paul McCartney, all of it. John Lennon’s solo records---hearing Plastic Ono Band for the first time, it just seemed so forward...

BW: With your considerable musical capabilities, and I hope I’ve sucked up sufficiently by mentioning them so often, you wouldn’t tour with just any old band, so tell us about the musicians you’ll be bringing to town.

AC: Well, it’s the same guys as before when I came through at the Bottletree. I’ve got a great drummer and a woodwind player who plays everything but keyboards and then a violinist who’s a really great guitar player. We’re doing a little bit of sampling, of looping, in musical ways, but for the most part we’re playing the songs pretty true to the recordings. Obviously, there’s a little flavor crystal here and there.

BW: Here’s a little broader philosophical question: how important is artifice to your music?

AC: I think the thing I went back to on this particular record was that it ought to be emotionally true but factually fictional. It’s all to get at a larger idea, which is, on this record, a lot about deception and what we can admit to ourselves and what we can give to the world and how everyone has this strange dichotomy. Basically, everybody’s got something to hide.

BW: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?

AC: I think I’ll respectfully not answer that question.

BW: And how’s life in Brooklyn? After growing up in the Lone Star State and touring around the world, how do you like the borough?

AC: Actually I moved to Manhattan not too long ago. It’s great. Unfortunately I don’t get to spend tons of time here, because this year there’s lots of touring, which is great also, but when I come back it’s fantastic.

BW: Is it difficult to decompress from the road in a place that has as high an energy level as Manhattan?

AC: Yeah, yeah. But you can always spend a day in bed kind of anywhere you are and turn off your phones. But it’s been creatively so great, because there are so many musicians here, people whom I’m excited to work with, dance performances to see and theater to see and all kinds of stuff. I love other places — I was just back in Dallas seeing my folks — but there’s really no place like New York.

BW: It’s the epicenter of everything.

AC: Oh, yes.

St. Vincent performs at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 5, at WorkPlay, with Andrew Bird opening. Tickets cost $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Call (205) 380-4082 or buy online at www.workplay.com.