Annie Clark and David Byrne ' it makes sense, right? Why not. Two critically-acclaimed artists, who both call New York City home, and sport album covers with their own mugs in a valium-drenched daze. (Here's David's, here's Annie's.) The reasoning should stop there, but it doesn't. To be honest, Byrne could collaborate with anyone ' and he has, several times ' but in the expansive indieverse, he teamed up with Clark, and the two plan on releasing an album later this year. I was thinking about all of this at Chicago's Vic Theatre on Friday night, amidst Shearwater's stale reverberated guitars and about a half hour before St. Vincent's set. When I'm bored, I tend to drift off like that, in these innate mental digressions. Sometimes they last a couple seconds, other times they clock in at 15 minutes; they can be vivid, they can be mundane, or they can be weird. Considering Alex Young's cat, Zooey, popped up somewhere in there as well, this one was a tad peculiar.
But Zooey is peculiar. To date, she's the only cat I can appreciate. I hate cats. I'm allergic to them, so I tend to stay away from the animal ' you know, to avoid getting asthma, the itchies, whatever. Lately, however, I've become obsessed with the cat; she's funny, she's quirky, and she's admittedly cute. When she's just staring about, lying like a duck on the windowsill, I can't help but run over and squeeze her. (I tend to act like Elmira around cute things.) I do this three or four times whenever she's around, and she usually reacts one of two ways: like a bored French hipster or a ravenous beast from hell. When the latter occurs, I remember her bloodline's related to a Serval ' in other words, an African wild cat that prowls the Sahara at 50 mph. Yeah, this is what makes her deathly unpredictable.
Okay, so that's the connection between Zooey and Annie Clark for me: unpredictability. Actually, that's selling the parallel short; the two both share the same deadpan stare, they undermine their charming demeanor with visceral reactions, and they both were or are New Yorkers. ALRIGHT, I'm done talking about the cat. The thing is, I've thought about this so much I couldn't help but write about it without losing my goddamn mind. Apologies.*
I've seen St. Vincent perform about three times in the span of two years. That's not a lot, or should even be construed as too much, but whenever you revisit an artist on-stage, there are expectations ' from the songs to the performer's -isms. Clark just doesn't let that happen; whether it's her brazen presence or she's just a damn good orator, I don't know. She works with three albums ' Marry Me, Actor, and our favorite from last year, Strange Mercy ' but she could have just one and it'd be the same experience. There's a reason for this: She shops things organic.
On Friday, she opened with Actor's 'Marrow', basically a staple in her repertoire, but by curving the verses, blistering the chorus, and needling around the lyrics, it sounded so new and fresh. Two songs later, she treated 'Chloe in the Afternoon' like some hazy, drug-laced venture within a seedy Brooklyn lounge. Call it cabaret or melodrama, but when she fell back at each line, tumbling towards the floor, it added an emphasis to the track that's missing on any regular listen. Although I wasn't too stoked about the synth solo this time around on personal favorite 'Dilettante', I couldn't help but smile at how she stomped about during the thudding verses yet maintained that beatific vocal of hers ' just gnarly adrenaline in focus.
Personality goes a long way, and Friday was no exception. On a number of tracks, Clark added personal anecdotes to a number of tracks; from calling 'Dilettante' a 'love letter, but also hatemail' for New York City, to discussing an author she discovered who escaped into nature and thought the 'Northern Lights' were 'the end of times, but it wasn't and that was good news.' She chuckled after the fourth digression, adding, 'Full of silver linings tonight, everyone.' Her best would arrive later, prior to their cover of The Pop Group's 'She Is Beyond Good and Evil'. She discussed how during their London gig Mark Stewart of The Pop Group, who caught wind of their rendition months beforehand, joined them on-stage to sing along. Prior to the set, Stewart handed Clark a gift: a dish scrubber in the shape of Sid Vicious, aptly titled Sid Dishous. 'This is what's become of punk,' he said.
Call it a source of inspiration, though, because in a move absolutely no one saw coming, Clark followed up the cover by edging into her latest track, this past Record Store Day's exclusive single, 'Krokodil'. During this sludgy, gritty rocker ' hands down her heaviest to date ' Clark first straddled a security guard's head, then sang atop the guard railing separating the stage and the crowd, and finally dove straight into the abyss of fist pumping devotees. She crowd surfed for a good three minutes, screaming 'dil, dil, dil' again and again in a manic manner. Fans in utter shock scrambled to support her and she refused to quit, singing every note and squirming over the sea of hands and arms like some epileptic mental patient. Now, there's no telling where Clark's bloodline stems from, but I'd like to believe it's just as primal as any Serval: deathly unpredictable.
Beware, Mr. Byrne, beware.
* - I realize how cliche and limiting it is to liken Clark to a cat, and how some might construe this as a typical male writer throwing around the ol' dogs and cats, boys and girls comparison. However, my justification is simple and swift: Zooey's one hell of a cat. She pushes the envelope on the expectations of a feline, and for that, I don't feel it's ' okay, whatever, I have no excuse. Still, if you only knew her ' Zooey, that is.
Photography by Heather Kaplan
Setlist:
Marrow
Cheerleader
Chloe in the Afternoon
Save Me From What I Want
Actor Out of Work
Dilettante
Black Rainbow
Cruel
Surgeon
Champagne Year
Neutered Fruit
Northern Lights
Year of the Tiger
She Is Beyond Good and Evil (The Pop Group cover)
Krokodil
Encore:
Your Lips Are Red
'
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