St. Vincent
D.D. Dumbo
Howler
Saturday
24 May 2014
$55
A Living Saint
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| St. Vincent at Howler - a religious experience photo by Bryget Chrisfield, published on www.themusic.com.au |
According to Catholic protocol, the prerequisite for
becoming a saint is to have performed two posthumous miracles. Annie Clark, aka
St. Vincent, is still very much alive, but on Saturday night at a small bar in
Brunswick she delivered a performance so dynamic and mesmerising that many in
the audience viewed it, if not as a miracle, then certainly as something close
to a religious experience.
If she didn’t already have the honorific ‘saint’ as
part of her name, the vast bulk of the audience would have petitioned The
Vatican to waive the petty bureaucratic requirement that saints be deceased and
demand her immediate canonisation.
St. Vincent was in Australia for the Vivid LIVE
Festival in Sydney, a light and sound spectacular that features a series of
concerts at the Sydney Opera House. The Pixies were the headline act for Vivid
LIVE playing exclusively in Sydney, but the other acts were all playing shows
in Melbourne as part of their visit. So instead of seeing St. Vincent in a vast
auditorium, we had the good fortune of seeing her in the back room of a pub in
Brunswick.
This was the third of a three night residency. I
hadn’t been to Howler before, but I was reliably informed by someone far younger
and groovier than me that it was the latest ‘it’ venue. The queue of people
waiting to get in – just to the pub that is, not even the show – attested to
this.
Brandishing our tickets, my friend John and I were
waved through the queue and into the first bar and dining area. The din was
incredible and it was just the sound of people talking loudly as they imbibed.
This led through to another large, but slightly less loud space, then through
to a club at the back where St. Vincent would be playing. It was a medium sized
space that probably held around
300-400 people.
There were a few booths at the back but a nice large stage and
reasonably funky décor.
D.D. Dumbo
A quiet bar to the side of the stage gave patrons a
view of the performer and piped the sound in through normal bar speakers,
allowing people to socialise while still hearing the band. It was from here we
took in support act D.D. Dumbo. He performed solo, commencing each song by
setting up a loop on a drum or guitar, and then adding layers progressively as
he went, creating an intricate and intimate sound. You know, like Ed Sheeran, but without the tatts or the 10 million fans. He was pretty good actually
– I bought his EP on iTunes when I got home. He was also quite handsome, and as
a one-man band who can multi-task, he would be quite handy to have around
the house.
The audience filtered in throughout his set and it
was noticeable that people were making a sartorial effort for St. Vincent. Boys
wearing lipstick and smart jackets, girls with new hair-do’s wearing their very
tightest gear. In one such group sitting near us the gent, probably aged in his
early to mid 20s was busy expounding authoritatively to his female companions
that REM was essentially an EMO band. In retrospect I wouldn’t say
categorically that he was wrong (or that it matters), but it was interesting if
only because I don’t think the term EMO existed during their heyday, and
certainly not when they started in 1982. Also because the speaker himself wouldn’t
have even been alive at the time I bought my first REM album, Fables of the Reconstruction around 1984
or so. Even if he was I doubt that he was attuned to the nuances of alternative
music micro genres of that era. I equate EMO with Goth, and REM were certainly
not a Goth band, though the black lipstick brigade weren’t beyond dancing to
“It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I feel fine” at Thrash and
Treasure, a late 80s Goth club in Richmond.
St.
Vincent
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| 'Stairway to Heaven' - St. Vincent at Sydney Opera House photo published by www.tonedeaf.com.au |
John and I had seen St. Vincent on her previous visit
to Melbourne when she performed with David Byrne at Hamer Hall, playing songs
from their Love This Giant
collaboration. As long-time Talking Heads and David Byrne fans, we’d gone to the
show primarily to see Byrne but came away obsessed by St. Vincent, both her
music and her striking stage presence…okay and her beauty; we’re only human. So
we were looking forward to see her perform her own show.
By the time the electronic buzzing intro of Rattlesnake pulsed through the speakers
to open the show, the crowd had packed out the room and a raucous cheer greeted
the newly platinum blond St. Vincent as she glided onto the stage. She was
wearing black crop jacket with 80s lapels that she teamed with a short black
pleather skirt. We knew immediately that we were in for as much a show as a
concert when she posed and bent herself into a series of stylised choreographed
movements before launching into the song.
The sound was clear and the mix distinct and the
music thumped along. Halfway through this opening track she took her guitar
from the roadie and launched into a loud, volcanic solo, her blond curls in
stylised head-bang. It was glorious.
The early part of the show was an exhilarating run of
tracks taken from her latest, eponymous album: the guitar led funk of Birth in Reverse, Regret and the dynamic marching rhythms of Digital Witness, broken only with the smooth club grooves of Cruel from previous album, Strange Mercy, all up tempo dance tracks
that got the audience bopping and moving.
To our left, one trio took to the dancing like
Baptists discovering it for the first time. One of the guys jumped up and down
pogo style, the woman swung extravagantly from side to side while the third guy
hunched in behind them and edged them forward. Clearly they were trying to push
their way to the front and it worked, because whoever was standing directly in
front and either side of them soon got sick of their deliberately provocative
jostling and let them through, if only so they could annoy someone else.
If I wasn’t throwing myself about with the same
abandon as others, it was because I was simultaneously following the scores in
the final minutes of the Hawthorn v Port Adelaide game that was finishing just
as the gig began. Sadly the Hawks lost, an outcome that would normally have me
moping about disconsolately, but St. Vincent was so mesmerising I was able to
shrug off the loss quickly, or at least postpone until later my devastation.
Laughing
with a Mouth of Blood and Year of the Tiger from her second and third albums respectively changed
the tempo, but not the intensity, which remained strong and absorbing.
She performed I
Prefer Your Love while draped across raised steps at the rear of the stage.
Clearly it was too obvious a motif to adopt while performing unreleased song, Pieta, however, she stood atop it to
elevate herself for the dirty funk of Every
Tear Disappears and the grandiose Cheerleader.
On a few occasions she paused to address the
audience. These were practiced monologues of quirky observations about what we
share in common. They sounded like they could have been scripted by David Lynch.
Marry Me
The band were tight, not just musically, but
performance-wise, with Toko Yasuda on keyboards and guitar joining St. Vincent
in her choreographed stage moves, and adding a few of her own. There was very
much a performance art element to the show from the two leading ladies, while
Matthew Johnson on drums and Daniel Mintseris on keyboards provided solid
grounding at the back.
All eyes, however, were on St Vincnet who was utterly
transfixing, especially when she executed her tiny Geisha steps and appeared to
glide back and forth across the stage, while staring fixedly at the audience. Like one of those paintings in which the
subject seems to follow you around the room, St Vincent’s stare seems to be
directed personally at each member of the audience.
Such was her spellbinding allure that the man next to
me actually moaned with lust at one stage, and eventually shouted out, “I wish
I wasn’t gay!”
I felt his pain, but before you accuse me of being
shallow, or just a dirty old man, remember, she started it. St. Vincent’s the
one with the predilicition for undressing in songs. Not on stage as such, but
lyrically she gets her kit off fairly regularly. In the first song she
performed at this gig, Rattlesnake,
she takes off her clothes in the second line. In Surgeon she’s ‘dressing undressing for the wall,’ while in Dilletante she asks Elijah ‘what is so
pressing that you can’t undress me anyway.’ In Cheerleader meanwhile, she claims that ‘I’ve seen America with no
clothes on’ – whether it is herself or America that is without clothes is
unclear, but in basic communication theory, the listener has the right to
interpet it as they wish and make their own meaning. If the more susceptible
audience members weren’t already whipped into a frenzy of desire by such
blatant exhibitionism, in Birth in
Reverse she reveals that for her, an ordinary day involves taking out the
garbage and masturbating. So you can understand people getting excited.
The stylish steady groove of Prince Johnny provided one of the highlights of the set, followed
by Marrow that began with a Philip
Glass like keyboard motif, but swerved dramatically into dirty funk territory. Huey Newton also took a dramatic turn
from a gentle television sci-fi soundtrack to a ferocious and histrionic rock
rant, a mood she continued with the strident Bring Me Your Loves with its marching drum tattoo, demented guitars
and its fizzing, sparking synths.
St. Vincent returned alone for the encore and
performed the slow and tender Strange
Mercy solo on guitar, before the band returned for the pounding, discordant
repetition of Your Lips Are Red.
I loved it. For me this was easily the best gig of 2014. St. Vincent's performance was stylized, sensual and cerebral, and the music ranged form torrid
to tender. It was immaculate and immersive; one of those shows we’ll be
boasting about having seen, and in particular that we saw it in a small intimate
space like Howler.
Prior to the show a recorded voice warned us against
bearing digital witness, and while I refrained from taking any pics, preferring
to bear actual witness, I’m glad others captured images from this startling
performance.
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| St. Vincent at Sydney Opera House photo published on www.theaureview.com.au |
Setlist
Rattlesnake
Birth in Reverse
Regret
Cruel
Digital Witness
Laughing With a Mouth of Blood
Year of the Tiger
Surgeon
I Prefer Your Love
Pieta
Every Tear Disappears
Cheerleader
Prince Johnny
Marrow
Huey Newton
Bring Me Your Loves
- - - - - - - - - -
Strange Mercy
Your Lips Are Red
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