A Saint Comes Marching In

Annie Clark has a newsflash for you: Phil Collins does not rock her universe. But it says so on Wikipedia!

“I know,” sighs a mock-exasperated Clark, the petite indie songbird who trades as St. Vincent. “Look, what happened was this – an interviewer once remarked to me that singers who leave bands rarely do well. And I said, well what about Phil Collins? He did pretty okay. So now it’s up on Wikipedia that I’m Phil Collins' biggest fan. He’s going to follow me to my grave. I know it.”
It’s a gloomy November afternoon in Dublin and Clark, a 25-year-old Texan with lustrous eyes and to-die-for cheekbones, is sipping Smithwicks in a boutique city centre hotel. She’s in the middle of a short Irish tour with NYC gloomsters The National.
“We played Belfast last night, and when we pulled into town I could hear explosions everywhere. I was a bit worried. Then I remembered: it’s Halloween night. It’s supposed to be like this”
Following some cred-earning stints in the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens’ touring band (Stevens’ Olympia show last March was virtually a Sufjan/Annie double act), Clark recently stepped into the light with Marry Me, a fully-formed and remarkably confident debut awash swoonsome chamber pop arrangements and dizzyingly ambitious songwriting. Clearly Clark has a pretentious side – the single ‘Paris Is Burning’ is, she confesses, a rumination on the ‘death of art’. Face to face, however, she’s charmingly down to earth.
“Marry Me is inspired by the television show Arrested Development, which like all smart TV got cancelled because it went over the head of most Americans,” she sighs. “One of the characters is 15 years old. It’s her secret: everyone think she’s much older. So whenever someone hits on her, her put-down is ‘marry me’. It’s like, how do you answer that?”
Recorded in Nashville, Marry Me features an enviable grab-bag of collaborators: there are cameos from members of the Polyphonic Spree and Man Or Astroman and, bizarrely, David Bowie pianist Mike Garson (those atonal tinkles on Aladdin Sane are his).
“He toured with the Spree, and that’s how we got to know each other.”
Did he regale Clark with tales of ’70s excess?
“Oh no, nothing salacious. Mostly we talked about music – boring, I know. He lives in California, so I’d mail him a piece of music as a soundfile and he’d send me back some ideas. It was a very smooth collaboration.”
Clark is part-Catholic, which growing up in Texas was “almost worse than being Jewish.” Curiously, for someone who's toured with uber-Christ Boy Stevens, she seems rather cool on religion today (she chose ‘St Vincent’ as an alias because it struck her as memorable and, more importantly, ambiguous). Certainly, she's no fan of George Bush’s brand of bible-wielding zeal.
“I was raised in typical suburban America," she says. "There were white picket fences, folks drove huge cars and ate steak for dinner. And everyone went to church, obviously, You know, I love where I’m from but I just didn’t fit in. So I’ve gone to Brooklyn. Everyone there seems to be in band. New York can be a tough town if you’re not ready for it. Right now, I feel like I’m ready.”b

St Vincent plays The Sugar Club, Dublin on November 24