St. Vincent, Castle Clinton

Castle Clinton is a beautiful setting for a concert. Orderly, timely, historic, and peaceful. The chairs reminded me a bit of a graduation or a wedding.  But despite being a bit reminiscent of such vomit-inducing occasions, it was lovely.  Seeing elderly people at concerts makes it even lovelier. Especially when they read sex columns in Time Out New York unabashedly.

St. Vincent is a terrific live performer. Recorded, her music is beautiful, but live it is beautiful with a twist- funkier, edgier and wittier.

Her choice of instrumentation was superb, and the sound translated perfectly to the audience (at least from where I was sitting). Could it be? A real sound check? The keyboard was very close to a real piano sound (at least compared to other concerts I've attended this summer). French horn, saxophone, flute, guitar, bass, violin and drum where carefully layered into each song. The violin was the main melodic accompanying instrument. I couldn’t even tell what it was connected to, but whatever equipment St. Vincent used, it worked well. The violin produced a beautiful natural tone on some songs, and strange highly processed distorted guitar- sounding tones on others.

Annie Clark, the woman behind St. Vincent, reminds me of a bird in her live performances. She doesn’t walk around the stage much, but she bows and pecks at the ground in fits of excitement. The way she holds her guitar in her hands in the middle of her small frame reminds me of an impatient mother-bird with a worm in her beak.

Annie has such a diverse range of songwriting. Though it’s not quite storytelling, it feels that way.  Her music feels intimate, and the structure of the songs is a bit tangential and vagrant but somehow still cohesive. Soft and tender to loud and piercing, most of her songs encompass these contrasts and embrace an incredible, satisfying completeness. At times her music feels like a ball of energy gasping for ways to escape; at others it’s floating effortlessly. All of her songs place special attention on timing, silence and space within a piece- something that is lost in many other live performances of alternative music (as opposed to classical and sometimes jazz).

There are tons of people on stage, but I get the impression it's mostly Annie who is creating everything. Not only because she's the lead singer and because I know she wrote the songs, but also because of something less tangible about her presence. It’s not that her performances seem like improvisations, because they definitely don’t.  But it does seems as if she’s giving the music breath, and its organically coming out of everyone's fingertips through her- the band is an extension of her voice, instead of just accompanying it. She couldn't always hit the high notes. But unlike seeing Cold War Kids in Prospect Park, I didn't really care. It didn't seem sloppy, but human. No one should ever need to strive for Itzak Perlman / Yo-Yo Ma perfection. Sometimes that type of proficiency gets mechanical. The point of music is to convey something. That process of communication gets lost in sloppy performances, but is facilitated through normal, human expression.  Annie's vocal flukes were just that- normal, human and a bit expressive.

Her weaker moments are when her songs lose their completeness and don't have range. Without the range of familiar, weird, soft and edgy components within her songs, they become boring. The musicians on stage even give off a different vibe when her songs aren't diverse. The new, self-proclaimed "Prince-inspired" material she performed is just that- repetitive and too much like a parody of a "slow jam". (She used the word "slow jam" first, for the record... but plural, her slow jam songs would absolutely have a 'z' at the end). Alright, maybe a ‘parody’ isn't quite the right word, but it does feel like the new material she sampled is yearning for something else- some twist, some departure, some more Annie quirkiness.

Also, wouldn’t you think that someone who is constantly reminded of their past with the polyphonic spree would make sure to NOT choose all-white concert garb?

Whatever. Welcome to Brooklyn, Annie…like everyone else…