I have conducted some rather terrifying interviews in my day, among them artists as commanding (and intimidating) as Neil Young and David Bowie. I have sat in rooms full of movie stars. I have met politicians and religious leaders. I once had dinner with Don DeLillo. Why was I so uncomfortable around Annie Clark, better known by her musical moniker, St. Vincent?
She’s delightful, easy to talk to, unpretentious, doesn’t stand on ceremony. I think it was something about the great variety of her output, the odyssey of her journey, the poise, the artistic confidence, the apparently unconflicted purity of her intent. I often feel these days like a mid-career artist and critic, with all that that implies — a sweaty sheen of desperation adheres to my practice, and all that I was certain about in my 30s now seems easily reconsidered in the most unsettling ways. I know more about the past than I know about the present. Faced with an artist so startlingly of the moment, so at ease in the present, with conviction about where we are now, it is hard not to feel fossilized.
And then there is her new record, “St. Vincent,” without a doubt her best, a gesamtkunstwerk, full of great songwriting, full of — subtle, unpredictable lyrics; great, strange bursts of guitar noise that stop certain songs in their tracks; winsome thoughtful moods; and, no matter what she says, real humor, of a sly, witty, world-weary kind. It’s a very accomplished record, an early candidate for one of the year’s best.
What could I bring to this conversation? Anything at all? What I have attempted, in the absence of confidence, is to goad the artist into considering the meaning of her most recent moves, her manipulations of persona, and to see in them, if possible, the context of popular music made by women going back 40 or 50 years, in which, just maybe, it appears that Annie Clark might be a sort of a shiny and admirable feminist icon for these degraded times. Successful? You be the judge.
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