While most of you were at Bonaroo, standing in mud and being pelted by rain as if some innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of a battle between earth and sky, some of us were lucky enough to see St. Vincent perform in the warm (too warm - damn you Mercy Lounge turn on the AC), dry confines of one of Nashville's finer music venues, Mercy Lounge.
Before this starts reading like some review of the show/St. Vincent's (Annie Clark, formerly of The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Steven's backing band) music, let me just say this: It is not. This band is great. Unequivocally, undoubtedly, un-some-other-word-that-I-won't-take-time-to conjure-up-in-this-sentence.
This band grooves like Spoon and then throws a film scores-worth of string arrangements and woodwinds at you and expects you not to blink. The funny thing is that the songs are so well written and are so cohesive that you actually don't. Annie Clark has a smooth voice that makes you think she learned to sing walking the yellow brick road with Judy Garland (okay, so the only reason I make this reference is because it gives me an excuse to show you this interview - I'm not really that smart, but the interview is a good one) and her skills on guitar are certainly not lacking. Just as you get used to the aforementioned beautiful string lines and solid indie pop structures, the band could just as easily melt down into noise and bedlam, frequently ending songs with turgid guitar feedback obscuring the once-beautiful melody.
So many bands try to take pop sensibility and turn it on its head. Usually, this ends up in some pretentious, hard-to-grasp concept album that sounds like an equation for a unique sound more than the actual product. This is where St. Vincent excells, and the fact that they pull it off in the live show is something to behold. But you probably didn't.
Don't consider this a review. Consider it me telling you about how you missed out, think about what I've said and, next time, be there when St. Vincent comes around.
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