Formed in: 2003, Dallas, Texas
Key Albums: Marry Me (2007), Actor (2009)
St. Vincent is the recording project of Annie Clark (born 1982, in Tulsa, Oklahoma), a one-woman band who mixes pop balladry, showtune-ish exuberance, squalling electric guitar, and subtle hints of jazz in her particular, complex compositions. Based in Brooklyn, but raised in Dallas, Clark had, before finding fame as St. Vincent, done time in robe-wearing sunshine-pop cult The Polyphonic Spree, and in the live band for banjo-pucking boy-genius Sufjan Stevens.
She took her stage name from St. Vincent's hospital in downtown New York, the place where, amongst other things, poet Dylan Thomas spent his final hours. The joke being that Clark's music is “the place where poetry comes to die.”
Background
Clark grew up in "suburban sprawl" in the greater Dallas area. She grew up learning guitar, but never had an acoustic, favoring, instead, loud electric guitar, fretboard 'shredding,' and classic rock. Her scope of influence was widened when, at 13, her aunt and uncle gave her an old box of jazz records.
"Jazz totally blew my mind when I was young," Clark recounts. “This box had Coltrane and Monk and Mingus and Billie Holiday and Bill Evans and Gil Evans and Billy Strayhorn and Johnny Hartman and Sarah Vaughn." (Later, Clark would write a St. Vincent song, “What, Me Worry,” that was a "sort of a gushing love letter" to Strayhorn and Hartman.)
Her same uncle, a jazz musician named Tuck Andress, invited Clark to tour manage his band, Tuck & Patti, as a "summer job" when she was 15. Subsequent touring would find Clark accompanying the band to China, Japan and Russia.
Whilst Clark learnt the ins and outs of live-performance logistics, she had been home-recording, all the while, making multi-layered, multi-instrumental recordings on computer. "The truth of the matter is: I’m a really big nerd, a sort of technophile," Clark confesses. "I've been recording on computer-based systems since I was 13, so that sort of multi-track arranging sensibility [became]really ingrained in my songwriting process," she told the American University Eagle.
Beginnings
After three years of studying at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Clark recorded her first, self-released EP, Ratsliveonnoevilstar. Soon after, she dropped out and returned back home to Dallas. There, several school friends (from local Lake Highlands High) had been playing in the Polyphonic Spree. Clark auditioned, and was on a plane days later to tour Europe.
Though Polyphonic Spree boss Tim DeLaughter has a reputation as a musical dictator, Clark was fine with her time in the band. "For me it was happy to the point where it turns maniacal," she told AV Club. "Where a smile becomes a really creepy grimace. I enjoyed that."
In 2006, Clark moved to New York, and, at the behest of her friend Shara 'My Brightest Diamond' Worden, joined Sufjan Stevens' live band. “When people say they hear elements of Sufjan’s music in mine, that’s just wonderful," Clark offers. "But, whilst it’s a compliment, is completely coincidental, because I started playing with Sufjan after my record was completely finished."
Arrival
In 2007, Clark's St. Vincent recordings started to earn her a buzz; her membership in Stevens' band no doubt helping.
“My favourite thing about how my St. Vincent project has evolved, is that I wasn’t signed,” Clark says. “I didn’t have a record even finished before I was getting attention on blogs, and people were excited about the music. It’s very gratifying that it wasn’t some obnoxious, over-hyped industry machine pushing me forward, but that people actually sought me out, and came to me.”
After signing to Beggars Banquet (who would later shuffle her to the iconic 4AD imprint), Clark released her debut album, Marry Me. Taking the title from cult television show Arrested Development, Clark “thought that it was cute and clever and utterly sincere and completely farcical at the same time,” yet it didn't occur to her that it would mean that, almost every show, someone would holler out a proposal.
After continuing to play in Stevens' band whilst focusing more and more on St. Vincent, Clark set about working on her second album in 2008. Played directly onto computer in her New York apartment, the music was composed as an imagined film-score, with lyrics added later. When unveiled, in May, 2009, the set was called Actor; its title is emblematic of the entire artistic process, and the self-delusion that comes with performing.
"The self-delusion," Clark explained, to The New York Times, "is the thing that makes you go: 'all the music that I’ve ever loved in the world, I want to be a part of that! Hey, listen to what I have to say, it’s really important!'”
