St. Vincent Goes to the Symphony
All strings are attached on Annie Clark’s latest tour
Call her restless, explorative by nature, or unbound by genre or style of presentation.
I’ve seen St. Vincent do art-rock, I’ve seen her shred, and I’ve seen her torch-sing. I’ve seen her hair in violet-tinged platinum and blonde. And now, I’ve seen her as a natural brunette with an orchestra, which maybe isn’t the shock of hearing Metallica do the same (Symphony & Metallica, 1999) but certainly a summertime switch-up. It takes a certain amount of confidence — a belief in your audience and your audience’s belief in you to do this. You’re banking on the hope that fans will follow you through the various shifts in style and tone.
David Bowie’s fans did that, so did Kate Bush’s and David Byrne’s. And St. Vincent, certainly not unfamiliar with the paths of those artists (and she’s collaborated with Byrne), has that gift. (Since her name is Annie Clark and it seems weird to keep making second references to a surname of “Vincent” I’ll go with Clark the rest of the way.)
On June 4, the Houston-born Clark played the sold-out Symphony Hall in Boston, accompanied by the Boston Pops, conducted by Jules Buckley. Along with Clark, her touring band comprises keyboardist Rachel Eckroth, guitarist Robert Ellis, bassist Allee Futterer and drummer John Hadfield.
AUDIO: St. Vincent “We Put A Pearl in the Ground” (Live)
It was the second date of a 16-concert U.S. Symphony Tour. The venue is on Massachusetts Avenue, just a few hundred yards from where she cut her teeth as a young student-musician at Berklee College of Music.
Clark, now 43, was not particularly effusive on stage — befitting the kind of performance she was doing in the kind of setting she was doing it at — but did note her formative days in the city, thanking “the people in Boston for raising me when I was a teen — showing what life was like outside of Texas.”
When this project was conceived with Buckley it was intended as a one-off in London at the Royal Albert Hall last year — a re-imagining of works from her catalog with band and orchestra and a live album recording. “I stepped offstage, and my manager was there, my mom was there, and I was just like, ‘I have to do more of this. Please figure out a way,’” Clark told the Boston Globe last month. “It really was one of the greatest experiences of my life … you just get to bathe in beauty for an hour and a half, two hours.”
She’s pretty spot on: Nearly 90 minutes of a symphonic slam or sweep, starting with “We Put a Pearl in the Ground,” a track from her debut album, heretofore absent from her live sets. It was followed by “Hell Is Near” and, shortly, with Clark strapping on her guitar for the fourth song, “Violent Times.” The latter was a whirlwind, with Clark singing, “I must have been dreaming / I fell down the well / Waking up, waking up in hell.” Those were the only songs from her latest album, 2024’s triple-Grammy winner, All Born Screaming. That was pretty much a full-bore rocking electro album – and more the way I’ve seen her in concert – but not the main idea here. The set had a well-designed ebb-and-flow structure to it, many of the mid-tempo songs ending with a big band and sharp stop.
Clark closed with a two-song encore of “Candy Darling” and “Slow Disco.” The former just had to be a semi-Lou Reed/Velvet Underground tribute, with Clark playfully flopping down on the stage and singing on her stomach, kicking her red patent leather Mary Janes in the air behind her. “Slow Disco” was a lovely and languid soft landing for an evening marked by measured tempos, lush backing and sporadic tumultuousness. It was by no means a “greatest hits” set — really, “Digital Witness” was the “big” one — but rather a trip through various selections from her eight albums.
VIDEO: St. Vincent “Digital Witness”
Particularly impressive was “Marrow,” the best electric-guitar-up-against-the-orchestra mesh and the menacing hush of “Now, Now.” There the orchestra gently surrounded Clark singing, “I’m not the feather at your feet / I’m not your yellow brick street / I’m not anyone you’ll see / I’m not anything / Now, now now, now now, now.” That was followed by the incessant repetition about forgiveness, real or not.
Yet, Clark had a sense of humor about what she was doing, too, preceding “Los Ageless” with a droll intro, “Well, here’s another one about depression.” And near the end of the regular set, during “New York” — clad in gray-ish skorts and jacket with black tights — she jumped off the stage and wound her way through the crowd on the floor, singing and slapping hands. Unadulterated joy right there.
Clark reminded me, somewhat, of what I saw Marianne Faithfull do with the Chieftains back in 1995. On paper, you might think it wouldn’t work – there’d be a clash, too much incongruity or a too-conscious grafting of parts onto another whole – but in person there was a distinctly different kind of magic in the air. Refined, with little glimmers of raw. My only complaint was there were times where it felt a bit remote – which could have been because we were seated in the rear of the mezzanine – meaning we had a great view of the many musicians and pristine sound but feeling distanced from the action on stage. And, these are my rock ears speaking, it could have been louder.
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