2024 has been a banner year for Annie Clark, a.k.a. the genre-defying and image-bending avant-pop shapeshifter known as St. Vincent.
In April, she released her seventh full-length studio album All Born Screaming, which, for the first time, was produced entirely by Clark. The record has received as much critical acclaim as its predecessors generally have, and has deservedly earned four Grammy nominations: Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for “Broken Man,” and Best Alternative Music Performance for “Flea.”
Her tour in support of the album commenced in May across the US, then traversed Europe in October. In these next few months, she’ll be bringing her live show to this hemisphere, from festivals in Jakarta and Hong Kong to her much-awaited first-ever show in Manila on January 8, 2025 at the Filinvest Tent in Muntinlupa City, promoted by Karpos Live.
Much has been said about Clark’s sharp songwriting, extraordinary instrumental skills (especially on guitar), and studio wizardry, but St. Vincent live is an altogether different animal.
Photographed by Alex Da Corte
On her tours, Clark has been known to bring some of the best and most esteemed sidemen, like multi-instrumentalist Toko Yasuda (Enon, Sleater-Kinney, Cate LeBon), drummer Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley), and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Nine Inch Nails), to name just a few. For indie rock geeks — who comprise a big chunk of St. Vincent’s fanbase — the musicians who make up her live band have become reason enough to want to see her in concert.
For her ongoing All Born Screaming tour, Clark is ably backed by Mark Guiliana on drums, Rachel Eckroth on keys, Jason Falkner on guitar, and Charlotte Kemp Muhl on bass. As always, it’s a band of aces, whose credentials range from being Grammy-nominated to having worked with the likes of Beck (again), Sean Ono Lennon, Rufus Wainwright, and David Bowie, among others. “Every single person in the band is a writer-composer-instrumentalist-artist in their own right,” Clark tells Billboard Philippines via Zoom. “But they’re coming together to play with me, and I think that that brings its own really, really cool energy.
“No one is like just a hired gun [or] session person,” she continues. “Even if they’re playing parts that I wrote, I want them to play them like they would play them. I pick band members who I want to be themselves in the context of my show.”
Having such able musicians also gives Clark the opportunity — and confidence — to drop her guitar and “get to be the frontperson and just perform.” “I can actually make sure I’m being a frontperson connecting to the crowd, being able to take chances as a performer — use my body in different ways onstage that are powerful and emotional,” she explains. “It frees me up as a performer, honestly, to have even more fun.”
Photographed by Alex Da Corte
Indeed, photo and video captures from various stops on her tour have shown Clark crowd-surfing or hanging on for dear life while reaching concertgoers in balcony seats — a far cry from the calculated choreography of her previous tours for her Masseduction and self-titled albums.
“The shows are increasingly wild, and I mean that in the best way,” she says. “The band just gets better and better, and I think something happens when I go onstage. I’m not really sure how to describe it, but it’s not as if I turn into a different person at all; it’s me, but it’s like everything that I don’t know how to say in my everyday life just comes out onstage.”
“I think the show is like equal parts rock pummeling and dangerous — I mean that artistically, not like [in a] fire hazard [way] — and also ecstatic rave,” she closes. “And there’s also moments that are really, really tender and just like, ‘OK, let’s all just connect for a minute and remember that we’re all in this together.’ It goes a lot of places, but hopefully the overall effect is it brings people life.”
As we await St. Vincent’s Philippine show on January 8, listen to her Grammy-nominated latest album All Born Screaming below: