Saint of dark noise pop

BY TOM FITZSIMONS

St Vincent has gone from touring in Sufjan Stevens' band to being a fixture in New York's indie music scene, working with everyone from David Byrne to Beck.

It's early March in New York City and Annie Clark, who records as St Vincent, has just received a text message from Dave Longstreth, the frontman of indie band The Dirty Projectors.

"He said it was the most beautiful city in the world," she says

She's talking about Wellington, where Longstreth played a short, scintillating gig a couple of weeks ago, and she performs tomorrow night as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Shortly before that text message, Clark was in Los Angeles, where she joined Beck and other musicians in recording a new version of the 1987 INXS album Kick.

"It was awesome," she says, sounding a little like Mel, the female stalker character on Flight of the Conchords.

Earlier this year, she accompanied David Byrne and Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) at New York's Lincoln Center in what she calls one of the highlights of her career.

In other words, she's hipper than hip, a darling of the Pitchfork set - a hip music and culture website - and a hit with her dark and dreamy noise pop.

What's the story with indie stars and their endless collaborations? Do they all live in the same house?

Clark laughs. "It's not that necessarily everybody gets together and hangs out, because everyone's so busy.

"But I think there's a feeling of mutual respect and goodwill going around. Bands like Grizzly Bear and The National and Dirty Projectors and New Pornographers and people who are in and around New York right now, there's just a feeling of, 'Good job, you're doing something really great.' "

Clark's 27 now; she wrote her first songs at age 12, while growing up in Texas. That was also when she started playing guitar - still her instrument of choice. In fact, she loves shredding so much she made the guitar the star of her most recent album, last year's Actor.

"I sort of envisioned that all the instruments were sort of cast members in the bigger play and the guitar was the monster," she says.

As the name suggests, the album has a theatrical bent - it was inspired by watching early Disney movies with the sound off, she says.

She's also a huge fan of live theatre. "What I tried to do with the record was make it very visual and think, 'What would this scene sound like?' "

Her stage name is a slight mystery. She told the New York Times that it came from the hospital where the poet Dylan Thomas passed away - "It's the place where poetry comes to die. That's me."

But now she says that was a joke. "No, it's the middle name of my great-grandmother."

Does it ever get confusing for people?

"Any time I meet fans after the show, it's cute if they say 'St Vincent', but I'm like, 'Oh no, call me Annie.' It's not a grand affectation or anything like that. It's more the name I made to make music under. No one calls me St Vincent in my life."

The poetry link is not entirely unfounded. Her work has all kinds of literary references, she says, from Charles Bukowski to E E Cummings to Philip Roth.

But her best inspiration for writing lyrics came from a fellow songwriter - Matt Berninger of The National, she says.

"One piece of advice he gave me which is actually very good is: just skim books. Don't even speed-read them, just skim them . . . I found that worked. It gets you out of your same rut of language."

Clark has done her apprenticeship in bigger bands, first with the Polyphonic Spree and then with Sufjan Stevens' touring band, after the idiosyncratic musician took a shine to her when she was still unsigned.

But much as she enjoyed being a "tool" for other people's visions, "it's probably most gratifying to see something you've conceived of from the beginning really come to life".

For her Wellington show, it's just her and a violinist, "but we do a lot of looping and stuff, so it's a full sound", she says.

That's a relief, because Clark's music comes to life most when there's lots going on - her melodic voice mixed with harmonies and guitar and all kinds of general noise.

Now she's made it on her own, her focus is on making music that's full of imagery, she says. "I think more than being a songwriter, I just want to make pictures. Maybe that sounds really pretentious, but I want to make something I can feel and touch and see, rather than chords and melodies."

St Vincent plays the Pacific Blue Festival Club tomorrow at 7.30pm.

- © Fairfax NZ News