I had the opportunity to attend an Austin City Limits taping this past Monday for St. Vincent. For those that aren’t familiar, St. Vincent is the stage name for Annie Clark. This is her second appearance on the show. Her ACL artist page has details on the first appearance. ACLs own recap from Monday can be found here. The episode will air in the Fall as a part of Season 44 on KLRU locally or on your PBS station.
I first learned about St. Vincent sometime just before her third album, Strange Mercy, was released. I really liked the first single, “Surgeon”. I heard an interview with her either on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast or elsewhere and learned that she grew up in Dallas. As for the new album, I ran through it a few times on Spotify prior to the show. I’ve heard “Los Ageless” which grew on me after only a few additional listens and I also found that I immediately liked “Pills” and “New York”.
She visited Austin back in February as a part of her Fear the Future tour. The stage show on Monday was quite elaborate by ACL TV standards and is clearly designed to reflect themes from her most recent album, MASSEDUCTION. She came out in an all red latex suit and took the stage with her three backing musicians, each on their own separate LCD floor and background screen. Being in the balcony was a benefit for this show due to the elaborate lighting that was used below and behind each performer. The keyboardist and drummer both wore very drab brown jumpsuit costumes (and masks?) in contrast to the female bass player and Miss Clark. I definitely thought of both David Bowie and Kraftwerk in watching the spectacle. She’s a pretty accomplished vocalist and guitarist. The solo performances held up as well if not better than those with a backing band. I’ll be interested to see how the light show translates onto television.
As always, ACL TV producer Leslie Nichols posted a shot of the set list to her Twitter account. Check out previous ACL TV posts going back to 2008.
