"Nerd-time!" - exclaims ANNIE CLARK a.k.a. ST. VINCENT as she begins methodically annotating a drawing of her pedalboard.
Clark is perfectly amiable, the complete opposite of what other journalists might like you to think - happy to educate me on MIDI and MasterMinds, a longtime Sleater-Kinney fan... and I have it on very good authority that she watched the first half of Taylor Swift's Vector Arena Sunday show [i.e. I saw her with my very own eyes] before rushing away to play her own show at Auckland's Kings Arms.
"...at a certain point a song isn’t about you anymore. It’s about the audience, it’s about how the song has worked its way into other people’s lives and that kind of keeps the meaning of the song new..."
St. Vincent
COUP DE MAIN: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is your first time here on a headlining tour of New Zealand?
ST. VINCENT - ANNIE CLARK: It is! I came two years ago as a duo and played at the Wellington Arts Festival, but this is with a full band and the whole thing. I’ve never been here with The [Polyphonic] Spree or with Sufjan [Stevens], I’ve never been here except to play in Wellington.
CDM: What do you feel are the main points of difference between your latest album ‘Strange Mercy’, and your first two albums, 'Marry Me' and 'Actor'?
ST. VINCENT: I think it’s more of an emotionally direct record. I think there’s more focus on the songs and the voice and the guitar.
CDM: Was that a conscious decision to develop your vocals and have more focus on the guitar?
ST. VINCENT: It just started with voice and guitar. I wrote it very simply, as opposed to other records which I’ve used a lot of technology to write.
CDM: You’ve said of your last album, that you could only play three songs by yourself on guitar, but on ‘Strange Mercy’ you can play every song on guitar. Was that an important thing to you to accomplish?
ST. VINCENT: It was! What I did with my first records was, my writing process was that I didn’t touch any instruments to write it, so I was making it all on the computer, and really the arrangements were coming first, the intricate thing. But with this record, I thought: "Okay, I’m gonna take it back to just the simplest form." A way that I haven’t actually written in a long time, which was just sitting down with a guitar and coming up with a song, like I imagine most people do.St. Vincent
CDM: What does the phrase ‘Strange Mercy’ mean to you personally?
ST. VINCENT: I think the phrase ‘Strange Mercy’ can mean a lot of things. What it does for me in a big way is that it juxtaposes something beautiful with something off-kilter, and I think that’s kinda what I’ve been trying to do with music for a long time, is figure out that place where something honestly beautiful and something kind of disgusting can co-habitate.
CDM: I've noticed that in a lot of reviews, people often say that you "play like a man". Do you find that sexist or complimentary?
ST. VINCENT: Well, I haven’t seen that as: "You play like a man!" But if I was going to dissect that statement, it is both, it's intended to be complimentary, and it is sexist. So it’s both things. It’s 2012, and I just think that the question of women in rock or women playing guitar, I just think it’s such a non-issue, and I think that probably the sooner critics and press outlets can just erase the ‘what’s it like being a women in rock?’ question from their vocabulary, the better off everyone will be.
CDM: Can you name some of your female guitar-playing heroes?
ST. VINCENT: I have a lot of guitar heroes I guess, some of them are female and some of them are male. Robert Fripp is one of them, and Marc Ribot, that’s another guitar hero. People like Sister Rosetta Tharpe who was an amazing female guitar-player. I don’t even wanna say female guitar-players, just guitar-players, because music of all things doesn’t need to be gendered and stratified, that’s so boring. Not you [though], you’re not boring!
St. Vincent
CDM: One of my favourite things about 'Strange Mercy' is your vocal experimentation. Was it important to you to figure out new and different ways to use your voice during the recording of the album?
ST. VINCENT: Yeah, there’s a lot of vocal-processing of things that are counter-melodies, or there’s this idea of the Greek Chorus often in ‘Strange Mercy’. The Greek Chorus would function as somebody who’s kind of commenting on the dialogue, it’s another character, it’s another voice. And with that, I would run my vocals through 'Eventide' processors and distort the vocal, just to kind of get this idea of two different characters going.
CDM: Are you more of an auto-biographical songwriter? Or do you prefer to write about imaginary situations?
ST. VINCENT: I wouldn’t say that I write about totally imaginary situations, but I find that it’s more interesting to write from the point of view of a character, and sometimes that character is very much me and very much things that I have personally experienced, but then other times it’s all about the story in a song.
CDM: With those character-songs, when you’re recording them or playing them live, do you fully immerse yourself into the headspace of that character while your singing their lyrics?
ST. VINCENT: Sometimes I will think about... not like method-acting or something, but I remember when I was recording the song ‘The Strangers’, I was picturing this woman who was like a Joan Crawford, kind-of drunk <laughs> and sassy. I'm trying to think what on 'Strange Mercy'... yeah I guess, a little bit. I try to go there.
CDM: I know some artists find that when they’re on a touring-cycle for an album and playing the same set-list night after night - singing the same songs live night after night - they feel like their songs lose meaning. Do you agree or disagree with that?
ST. VINCENT: No, I think every time I play, every show is different, and I think that at a certain point a song isn’t about you anymore. It’s about the audience, it’s about how the song has worked its way into other people’s lives and that kind of keeps the meaning of the song new, because you see it reflected in other people every night.
CDM: What was it like tour-managing your uncle’s band [Tuck and Patti] when you were a teenager?
ST. VINCENT: Well, tour manager is a glamorous word, or seems like a glamorous word. I was like the roadie, I was carrying gear, checking things in at airports, making sure they had flowers backstage and interfacing with promoters who were sometimes really nice and sometimes a little seedy. It was a great apprenticeship, to be in the music industry.
CDM: Can you name ten bands or artists that have changed your life?
ST. VINCENT: How about Solex, Charles Mingus, Pink Floyd - I love the Floyd - Selda [Bağcan], Harry Nilsson, Steely Dan, [Igor] Stravinsky... Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Swans.
St. Vincent
CDM: If you could be a Disney princess, which one would you want to be and why?
ST. VINCENT: Hmm, who has the most fun? Let’s see... I’d say I’d rather be one of those dogs in '101 Dalmatians'.
CDM: I can see that, they do have a lot of fun.
ST. VINCENT: They do, they’re just really cute!
CDM: What are your five favourite things in the whole wide world and why?
ST. VINCENT: Oh god! My family, for obvious reasons, my best friend, for obvious reasons... oh dear. Music obviously, and showering, I love showering, and probably 'Glenlivet 18', it’s a bourbon.
CDM: We're so behind in New Zealand and I haven't had time to catch-up online yet, but what was it like being on 'Portlandia'?
ST. VINCENT: Oh it’s so funny! It’s great, it was really fun, I got to meet Kyle MacLachlan, who is the gentleman of all gentlemen, and I love Fred [Armisen] and Carrie [Brownstein], they are so funny. I was a big Sleater-Kinney fan when I was a kid.
CDM: Same! I flew over to Melbourne last week to see Wild Flag live because they didn’t come here.
ST. VINCENT: Oh, you did?! Aww that is so cute, I saw them in Sydney just a few days ago. They’re great, I love them. They’re so funny.
CDM: As someone who is fairly clueless about how effects pedals work, could you please draw your pedalboard and explain how it all works?
ST. VINCENT: Sure! Okay, so here’s what we have going on. Nerd-time! All of these pedals get routed to this, which is called a Mini Effect Gizmo [MEG on the diagram]. A Mini Effect Gizmo gets routed via a MIDI to this thing called a MasterMind, which is a Midi-capable, programmable unit. For example, say on any given song I have... the verse of something is something from this Eventide PitchFactor, and then when the chorus comes in, it’s the PitchFactor and it’s this big ZVex Mastotron, which makes it sound really big and distorted. So I would program this Mastermind to go: "Okay, on this bank, this patch, it’ll be the PitchFactor." And the PitchFactor program bank is say, "22. So, I program that into this, and then say that patch number is 001, and that’s like the verse of a song. And then say the chorus is 002, and that’s 001 and... is this making any sense to you?
St. Vincent
CDM: Yes! So everything’s inter-linked?
ST. VINCENT: Yeah, it all interlocks. But also, MIDI is talking to my keyboard player’s laptop, so on the chorus or verse of any given song, it sends a message to my MasterMind: "Okay, go to that bank." And within that bank, it may be PitchFactor on program setting "22, and maybe that’s the same thing on "22 and we’re gonna add a Mastotron. So, I’m able to program the whole show. Every part of every song can have a totally different musical sound, because otherwise if I wanted to go from a verse of one song to the chorus of another, I’d have to go: "Uh, okay, press that pedal and then... press that pedal, and then press that pedal off." Just in order for it to all be connected! So, the schematics are a little bit tricky, but once you get it down you’re able to really program an entire show. Every song has a lot of different guitar sounds in it, so that’s what it is.
St. Vincent
ST. VINCENT's latest album 'Strange Mercy' is out now - featuring the singles 'Cruel' and 'Cheerleader'.
Watch St. Vincent's music video for 'Cruel' below...