The Saint is coming: Hot Press meets St. Vincent

You've heard the story a million times. A musician goes on the road, falls into bad habits, pays a terrible price. Annie Clark, aka St Vincent, has heard it too. She never guessed she would one day live out the cliché in person.

"On my last solo tour I did waaaay too much yoga," she sighs. "I actually loosened the ‘treads’ in my knees [medical note: we have no idea what that, in fact, means]. It was so bad I couldn't run. Everything was all wobbly."

None of what she is saying is news to Hot Press. We were there when her bikram addiction was at its direst. On the occasion of our last chinwag, us and Annie ended up sprawled on the pavement outside the venue where the interview was supposed to take place, comparing favourite jogging routines. Just off the tour bus she needed a run real bad and wanted our advice as to possible routes. This, we recall thinking in the moment, was the light exercise equivalent of shooting up with Keith Richards circa 1971.

Two and a half years on, as Annie says dodgy knees have required her to re-imagine her calisthenics regime. That's okay. If her new production – she brings it to Dublin late February – is as ambitious as she hopes, lack of exercise will be the least of her problems.

"It's going to be like doing aerobics on stage every night," she says, her lilting voice containing trace elements of her native Texan twang. "Right now we’re rehearsing 12 hours a day. The performance is physical. I'm putting a lot of myself into it. A lot of myself."

Clark is working with some of the people who designed Kanye West's wacko avant-garde Yeezus tour, which featured West rapping behind a mask (don't worry, she won't be selling Confederate flags at the merch stall – a Southerner, she understands exactly why you can't go there). Her ambitions, she confesses straight up, are grandiose. She intends putting on a concert that will jolt you out of your comfort zone, that will make your eyes widen, your jaw clack open.

"I love going out, playing guitar and stage diving," she enthuses. "Jumping into the crowd is an unsurpassable experience – nothing else feels that good. You absolutely lose your mind doing it. The point is, after a while it starts to resemble a gimmick. You begin to feel hokey.”

She isn't an entertainer, is the thing. She's an artist. The older she gets, the more important that distinction seems.

"I don't want to put on one of those shows where I come out and say, 'Hello Dublin, it's great to be here – we ate at this place around the corner'. That's boring. You're not suspending anyone's belief. Okay, it's fine if you want to have a few beers and listen to some music. I aim for something 'elevated'”.

The tour is in support of Clark's new album, called simply St Vincent. She took the stage name at the start of her career and, no, it hasn't anything to do with the north Dublin GAA club, though wouldn't it be fantastic if it did? She recorded it in a three month burst after coming off the road with Talking Heads man David Byrne, where they were promoting Love This Giant, their exceedingly odd 2012 hook-up.

A torrid, largely digital affair, St Vincent is a departure for the 31-year-old Clark. Highly stylised, it’s upholstered with ominous melodies and sees her aggressively re-branded as an imperious pop maven. From an artist who until now placed a premium on indie rock 'authenticity' it represents quite the turn about. You get a sense of her transformation from the cover art. Again, created in conjunction with some of Kanye West's design crew, it finds Clark posing like a sort of alternate nation Lady Gaga or Janelle Monae. A vision of Bride Of Frankenstein hair, futuristic clothes and laser-beam eyes.

"On every record, I have a different idea of what I want to achieve," she says. "With [2011's] Strange Mercy, I had this image of a house wife on white wine and barbiturates staring out a window, completely bored. On the new album, the idea was 'near future cult leader'. I styled everything around that concept. Doing the photo-shoot for the album, I became obsessed with physicality – the way gestures and symbols carry so much meaning. If I crossed my legs one way, I looked like a Hollywood starlet. If I crossed them the other, I was imperious and queenly. In the end my legs are straight ahead – that was the most confrontational and powerful pose."

Clearly she’s travelled a distance since the day the two of us sat outside the Button Factory, idly swapping jogging banter. Indeed, the sense that Clark has grown into her pop star skin is heightened as you slap on St Vincent. On the very first song, 'Rattlesnake', she recounts walking on a friend's farm in west Texas and spontaneously whipping her clothes off. Steady on, Annie – you'll give all the indie boys reading this a collective coronary.

"It's a true story," she smiles. "Do people think I'm not spontaneous? I can be very spontaneous. Anyone who’s seen me on stage will know that, I imagine."

Off the cuff nudity is merely the start. Newton' recalls a real life 'trip' she embarked upon after taking too heavy a dosage of the sleep drug Ambien.

"When you tour there are days you need to stop up and rest, spend the entire day in bed," she explains. "I'd arrived in Helsinki from New York and was flying to Japan the next day. I had to sleep. So I took Ambien. Only I didn't nod off. I started hallucinating, imagining I was talking to [Black Panthers founder] Huey Newton. It wasn't scary at all – just very interesting."

Clark was raised Catholic, unusual in a part of America where Evangelical Christianity is ubiquitous. Consequently she grew up feeling apart.

"I remember having a friend in junior high who gave me a baptist version of Christianity. I asked her, what happens to people who haven't heard of Jesus? She said they went straight to hell. What about animals? Apparently they were going to hell as well. I thought, 'Wow, hell sounds like it's pretty full.' I will say that my family always had a sense of humour about religion. I remember dad giving me a copy of I Am Not A Christian by [mid 20th century philosopher] Bertrand Russell. You can probably attest to this in Ireland but I think religion is often a cultural thing. It's there in the background rather than something you may yourself personally believe. That's how it was for us at least. We didn't get carried away by it."

Still, she loves Texas – in ways she struggles to completely articulate. Clark has lived in New York for going on ten years now. She returns home as often as she can. "I belong there in ways that are so elemental," she reflects. "I have a kind of intimacy with Texas. I know the smell of every season. I know what the light is like at a particular time of year. If you showed me a picture of the Texas sky, I would know if it was winter or fall or summer, just by the quality of the light."

How much of Clark's new theatricality you wonder, is owed to the experience of collaborating with Byrne? Never a chap to think inside the box, spending extended time in his company appears to have altered her outlook dramatically.

"Touring with David led me to do a ‘180’ as a performer," she says. "The concerts were more light- hearted, more absurdist, more structured, more choreographed. We had to figure out how to bring the chemistry we had to life in a concert setting. I got to stretch as a vocalist and guitarist, to hone my chops.

"The shows I did with David were inspiring. The audiences would get up and dance in a light- hearted way. It was extremely affirmative. Singing alongside him was hugely influential."

St Vincent's self-titled album is out now