I’ve liked Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, ever since seeing her supporting Sufjan Stevens a year or two back. Well, actually, doing the support slot and playing in Sufjan’s touring band. On her CDs maybe the truth is more ‘admired’ than ‘loved’. Although there is definite progression from one to the other, her newest recorded offering Actor shares a lot with first album Marry Me. St Vincent’s recorded music is complex – nothing wrong with that. The ‘Actor’ album is supposedly the result of infatuation with film, but for me it was most reminiscent of pure ‘musicals’, circa 1958. More than a few of the songs actually seem to start out as musical film scores, nice enough, and then break down, deconstruct and are reassembled into something the same but different. So I looked forward to tonight with enthusiastic interest.
It was a hot night in the Night and Day Cafe in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. That said, it’s always a hot night in there. It’s a lovely scruffy place, slightly falling to bits with the stage lighting consisting in part of a reading lamp hung on an extension lead. The good thing is there is always a chance of a decent view.
We arrived in time for both supports, both well worth the effort
First up was Table – a Manchester band that could easily be mistaken for trad Irish, although in a refined rather than raucous way. Their biggest trick was getting six of them and a huge array of acoustic instrumentation including a double bass and cello onto the not very huge stage at the Night and Day. The sound went with my misconception about their nationality – if it’s not too big a comparison, they put me in mind of Avalon Sunset era Van Morrison. I could just imagine them doing “Have I told you lately”.
They were followed by Blue Roses, which is actually Laura Groves, sometimes on her own, sometimes (as tonight) with a bit of help. They have a healthy diary filled with upcoming dates like Latitude – apparently I narrowly missed seeing them / her supporting Ladytron a few months back, or I might have discovered them a bit sooner. Blue Roses started out tonight with delicate folk in a trippy vein. I actually liked them better as they worked towards their closing number Rebecca which was still indie-folk but fully instrumented with keyboards, drums and guitar.
By the time St Vincent came on the place was pretty well ram packed, we were lucky to be at the front leaning on stage. I could see the set list (complete with planned encores) so I could see it was going to be a mixture of tracks from both albums and the intervening EP. First song was Marry Me and I was straight away struck by the immediacy of the song in this live environment. This set the tone for the whole night. Like her old touring partner Sufjan, St Vincent was just an entirely different experience live. Maybe I just don’t play my CDs loud enough but it really was chalk and cheese. It was as though the only way properly experience the complexity of St Vincent’s music was to see it unpacked on stage. The things that make the recorded output ever so slightly ‘challenging’ were all still were. The sweeping changes, the sudden shift from melody to jarring, shaking, trembling rock-out – but it all came together on stage tonight. The there were even elements of jazz and Stax era soul showing through. I’ve read comparisons to the Flaming Lips, but if Annie is not insulted by this I could see further back to Frank Zappa.
We were treated to a little story from Annie. Apparently they had come over that morning on the ferry from Dublin. She apologised that this would probably only make sense to “indie geeks”. She needn’t have worried about that, she was among kindred spirits tonight. The basis of the story was that they’d ended up sharing the same ferry with Of Montréal and and also with Fever Ray. Gosh they could have a mini ATP going on there! I’ve done the same crossing myself once or twice to see bands and the most exotic thing I’ve ever seen was a guy in his 60s with the word ‘bastard’ tattooed across his forehead.
The audience were hugely enthusiastic – at least the front row knew all the words. The St Vincent touring band take their job seriously indeed. There was a notice pinned up just before they came on explaining that Annie uses in-ear monitors and therefore the vocal sweet spot for the audience was likely to be a distance back from the stage. That’s pretty serious. I have to admit I stayed where I was, it was a sweet enough spot being three feet from the band.
Set list
• Marry me
• Strangers
• Save me
• Now now
• Actor
• Paris is burning (from the EP)
• Bed
• Laughing
• Black rainbow
• Marrow
• Just the same
Encore
• Party
• Lips
St Vincent’s music really came together for me last night. The net result was that today I found myself whistling and humming Marry Me – and enjoying it rather than admiring it
Result!
