The Plot Thickens Issue #40

As St. Vincent, Annie Clark's star shines on Actor

By Emily Becker
Published: June 1st, 2009 | 12:00pm

From the accidental ear training she picked up listening to Steely Dan on her Dallas suburb’s classic rock station to mastering her part as a supporting player for Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, Annie Clark’s starring role as St. Vincent has been years in the making. The excellence of Clark’s 2007 debut Marry Me only increased her fans’ anticipation of her second full-length release.

There’s a song on Actor called “Black Rainbow” whose inherent contradiction — a rainbow that seems to contain no colors, but truly holds them all — encapsulates Clark’s controlled mixture of the beautiful and the grotesque, not unlike Macbeth’s witches chanting “fair is foul and foul is fair.” When I catch up with Clark shortly before the release of Actor, she explains that the album was born from her interest in “dramatic form” and film. “The typifying point of drama is ‘What does a person want? And what happens when they don’t get it?’” she says, adding that sometimes getting what you want can also be a terrible thing. While the songs on Actor were inspired by cinematic form, when I asked her what kind of film she might someday like to score, Clark hesitated thoughtfully before expressing a preference for a stream of consciousness “dreamy Fellini kind of thing where there is the loss of linear time and you have these beautiful images that are being juxtaposed with other images, but they are all quite surreal, elegant, and poignant.”

With this profound appreciation for dramatic technique, it’s no surprise that Clark is also an avid reader. Presently, the musician is tackling the Thomas Pynchon novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, which she refers to as “a punisher.” Many of Clark’s lyrics carry the weight of a good poem, particularly “Actor Out of Work,” Actor’s first single, or “Your Lips are Red” from Marry Me. Clark mentions that she enjoys the work of American poet Charles Bukowski saying, “I like the transition from floral poetry to the more bruising poetry.” When I suggest that this transition might occur frequently in her work she agrees, though her laughter makes it clear that she doesn’t consider herself to be working on Bukowski’s level. Clark’s modesty crops up throughout the conversation — she once jokingly implies that any live record she might release would probably end up in the “bargain bin at Best Buy in 2040.”

While on tour, she puts the Pynchon and Bukowski aside for “an easy read,” yet what captures Clark’s imagination seems anything but easy; “I’m a nerd, so I spend a lot of time programming samplers and scouring the Internet for the best way to replicate a Mellotron. It’s a challenging affair. But my hope is that no one really sees how much we’re all doing. My hope is that it sounds like, ‘Oh, magic! How’d you do that?’ That’s the goal.”

The translation of Clark’s music from studio to stage relies heavily on pedals and samples, but she hopes that these extra tools don’t detract from the experience of hearing her play live. Clark says that her live shows are “always more visceral and always more violent,” adding that it’s not unusual for her fingers to bleed after a concert. Her commitment doesn’t stop with bloody fingertips — she also doesn’t drink alcohol while on tour. “If I have even one glass of wine I won’t be able to sing as well,” says Clark, although she does admit to frequently enjoying Kombucha before shows. “I’m on the Kombucha train. It makes me feel really, really good.”

Between her fondness for gadgetry and fermented mushroom tea, Clark admits to being somewhat of a nerd, although you’d never know it from the looks of her: contrasting classic femininity with raucous intensity, her personal fashion aesthetic is seamlessly integrated with her on-stage persona. It’s not unusual for Clark to create a dark, fuzzed-out guitar riff while manipulating a host of pedals with feet clad in adorable, black patent Mary Janes. When asked about her seemingly monochromatic wardrobe Clark laughed saying, “I’m trying to liven things up this spring by wearing more color, but I am accidentally wearing all black today.”

Whether fans admire her as a style icon or for her technical chops, with Actor Clark proves that she is both Dorothy and the Wizard. And not unlike the dreamy film she may one day score, her songs capture the surreal, the elegant, and the poignant. Then seconds before it all becomes too precious it’s clear: Every moment of beauty in Clark’s world bears the weight of an accompanying scar.