St. Vincent was diva, high priestess, oddball rolled into one in ‘All Born Screaming’ tour Manila

MANILA, Philippines – Annie Clark has always wanted to play Manila, and last January 8, she finally did. It was David Bowie’s birthday, but also Elvis Presley’s. The Thin White Duke knew about artifice, and The King knew about sex; Annie knew a bit about the power of both in the context of the rock show.

Touring behind All Born Screaming, her seventh album as St. Vincent, Clark and her live band – guitarist Jason Falkner (Jellyfish, The Grays); drummer Mark Guiliana (whose stellar discography includes drumming on Bowie’s final album Blackstar); keyboardist Rachel Eckroth (Rufus Wainwright); and bassist Charlotte Kemp Muhl (who’s brilliant in The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger with Sean Lennon) – delivered a cathartic and jubilant sampling of material both new and road-favored.

The under-two-hour KARPOS-mounted show (held at the Filinvest Tent in Alabang) was mired by an under-two-hour delay from its original 8 pm slate. But when Clark and her group finally took the stage, they did it with a ferocious energy that didn’t let up for the entire duration of their set. Equal parts guitar-driven rock show, campfire commune, and electro-industrial fuzz barrage, the quintet was an arresting presence both visually and sonically. 

Famous for adapting varying personas in every new release — an NPR report singled out her robed “near-future cult leader” (2014’s St. Vincent) and her leather-bound “dominatrix at the mental institution” (2017’s MASSEDUCTION); the NME has highlighted earlier personas like the “woman who fell to Earth” (2007’s Marry Me) and the “oddball [thespian]” (2009’s Actor); while I personally have a soft spot for (what I imagine to be) a disco-era seductress spy (2021’s Daddy’s Home) – Clark has reverted to a kind of rebooted, clean-slate self on this tour. 

Talking to GQ upon the release of the current record, Clark says, “It’s not in the third person. It’s not from a distance, not at a remove. No, this is just life.” And while I know she meant that intellectually, I also know the premise has physical ramifications: she’s no longer tied to fixed choreographies or answerable to a strict aesthetic; she responds solely to her own instincts, and she delivers chiefly on her own impulses. 

(In other words, St. Vincent doesn’t resort to external combustion agents. She doesn’t need to be set on fire — that striking visual appears as All Born Screaming cover and denouement in the “Broken Man” video — because she is fire.)  

Clark and her band were given to sporadic bursts of guitar-humping, shows of aggro intimacy, stage-diving and other pseudo-parodic rock stances, as well as all manner of unhinged movement. Needless to say, St. Vincent didn’t just phone it in: she was shamanic in her best-known numbers (“Los Ageless,” “Digital Witness”); debauched-erotic in her newer numbers (“Flea,” “Broken Man”); and riveting in slower tunes (“Dilettante,” “Candy Darling”). 

She was, however, most intimate in the closing third, peaking during the protracted piano intro to “New York,” which she dedicated to “outsiders” who may not be “on the top of the list” but make up the “heart, soul, and fabric of a city.”

Falkner and Guiliana get high marks for fueling the set with their masterful and spirited playing. The erstwhile Jellyfish man made Annie’s parts sing but also lent them an improvisational fluidity, while the Beat Music leader shifted gears with ease, volleying between propulsive intensity and tasteful sparseness. Kemp Muhl, meanwhile, shone on both bass and synths, and her little, er, moments with Annie gave the show that extra jolt only possible through cheeky sleaze. 

Clark, finally, alternated between fuzz high priestess (playing her signature Music Man), cabaret diva, chamber-music geek, and theremin oddball: always enthralled, always enthralling. She’s one to wear her influences proudly on her sleeve, but also one to go ballistic in rearranging their molecular makeup, throwing Kate Bush stylings, David Byrne theatrics, and Nine Inch Nails beats into a sonic cauldron alongside Young Americans Bowie and In Utero Kurt and many others. 

But, also, everything is inextricably her, devoid of lineage though very much a product of several. For better or worse — outside Grammy wins and movie soundtracks and Taylor Swift co-writing credits — she’s our weirdo, making a scene, our pain machine. – Rappler.com