Teatro Dal Verme, Milan – November 23, 2011
Girls, have you ever wanted to be a kickass rock’n roll guitar goddess? Well, I do! And I want to be like her: Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent. She’s not only extremely talented, she is also impossibly gorgeous, charming and absolutely funny.
St Vincent live at Teatro Dal Verme, Milan - Photo: Valentina Villa
She put on a great show last night! The venue was a cosy theatre of approximate 200 people, totally captured by this sweet-looking curly-haired Oklahoma – but now living in Manhattan – girl.
The performance focused on ‘Strange Mercy’ (2011), St. Vincent’s latest work. I’m truly impressed by the power that those songs assume outside of the studio-recording context. I also have to say that Clark’s stage presence along with the energy displayed by the band, surely exceeded my expectations.
St Vincent is a small band: a drummer, two keyboardists and a chorister. Obviously, at center stage there’s Annie with her extra-extra-extra-expanded guitar pedal board and her surprising ability to create a massive sound. She’s a master of effects pedals!
Set starts with ‘Surgeon‘ and ‘Cheerleader’, two songs from Strange Mercy‘s record. From the beginning, sounds are pushed hard to the lower frequencies, the moog bass thundered and shaked entrails. The expectations of a quiet-evening-concert quickly blow away. Sadly, we were sitting down on theatre chairs so we couldn’t dance to the catchy melody of ‘Cruel‘, Strange Mercy’s most pop song, in which Clark shows us her skills as singer.
Between the songs St Vincent entertains the crowd with some hilarious anecdotes. I remember the one about she running into Pop Group lead singer Mark Stewart: after he heard that she had been covering Pop Group post-punk-anthem song ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil‘ on her US tour and on TV show ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’, he joined Clark at her London gig, he gave her a dish scrubber in the shape of Sid Vicious as a present and said: “Its name is Sid Dishious. That’s all you get from punk!”. What followed the funny story was a great version of ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil’.
The show ends with a two song encore ‘The Party‘ and ‘Your Lips Are Red‘. On the last song Annie brings her noisy ad dirty guitar literally BETWEEN the audience, encouraging people to tickle her strings.
St. Vincent‘s performance left people noticeably speechless and she proved in her hour and a half performance that she’s one of the finest acts in the indie music scene at moment.
– Lorena Ripamonti
Click on images to display the full photos
Photo: Valentina Villa
No Comments
There are currently no comments on Live Review: St Vincent. Perhaps you would like to add one of your own?