St. Vincent: "Life is short, which I'm more aware of now than ever"

“We’re all born screaming in some ways,” St. Vincent tells me. “If you are witnessing a birth and the baby comes out screaming, that’s the best sign in the world. It’s alive!”

It’s a particularly profound rallying cry to hit on, but one that makes sense when you’re chatting about All Born Screaming, the seventh album from Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent. Across 18 years, the Grammy-winning art-rocker has explored a range of styles in Bowie-like fashion. Lately, though, she’s aiming for a more unfiltered, rawer style of expression.

When Hot Press catches up with the singer in her LA studio somewhere beneath the Hollywood sign, she’s finishing off her breakfast of waffles and berries. She further considers her latest LP.

“You just have to make music that calls to you, and then hope for the best with the reception,” she continues. “But I think artists don’t do themselves any favours when they start reverse engineering the process, or being self-conscious in their work, asking what people will like.”

Fortune indeed favours the bold and St. Vincent has undeniably struck gold with All Born Screaming, unleashing one of the best albums of the year. Clark describes the recording environment as akin to a mad scientist’s laboratory, or a scene from Young Frankenstein. Throughout 7am bursts of creativity, she dabbled in microdosing psychedelics, and downed scores of iced coffee to see where her mind would wander.

It’s a far cry from the softly spoken person at the other end of the line, enjoying the same breakfast I favoured throughout my first year in college. Still, both in person and as an artist, Clark is clearly multi-faceted. As well as a formidable musical range, throughout her career, the singer has also played with her image.

On 2017’s Masseduction, she opted for a dominatrix-style vibe in neon latex, while on 2021’s Daddy’s Home, she wore a blond wig and ’70s-inspired fashion reminiscent of Candy Darling. On All Born Screaming, though, things are more straightforward. The songwriting process found Clark combing through a series of industrial-tinged jams, searching for the four bars she couldn’t do without. Then, as with lead single ‘Broken Man’, she’d write a song around the loops.

“As an artist, it’s very important to have a beginner’s mind,” says Clark. “If you’re not inspired by the thing that you do really well, find something you don’t know how to do. Then, all of a sudden, everything is pure discovery.

“For me, that meant digging into modular synthesis with All Born Screaming, and being a little grimy in my approach of trying to programme things, as well as letting electricity do its thing and surprise me.”

Lyrically, All Born Screaming reckons with life and death, and Clark is keen to talk about it, if obliquely.

“Life is short, which I’m more aware of now than ever,” she reflects. “Every record I’ve ever made has very much been about what’s going on in my life at a given time. It might not always be obvious, but All Born Screaming is about birth, life and death.”

From the push-and-pull rhythms of the arrestingly romantic ‘Flea’, to the warped sleaze of ‘Broken Man’, the album also explores the idea of hope. The funky wig-out of ‘Big Time Nothing’ features something of a mission statement: “Don’t blink, don’t wait / Don’t walk, you’re late… Do ask, but don’t tell”. Continuing the line of discovery and self-enquiry, All Born Screaming is the first record St. Vincent produced entirely alone, and for good reason.

“There were places that I needed to go emotionally with this album, which I couldn’t have gone had anyone else been in the room,” she says. “I’ve been recording myself in my bedroom since I was 14, so being alone in a room with all of your ideas, fears and gear feels very familiar.”

In the past, of course, St. Vincent has collaborated with a whole host of major names, including Taylor Swift, Bon Iver and Talking Heads legend David Byrne. This time round, she enlisted long-time pal Dave Grohl to lay down some drum tracks.

“We met and became buddies in 2014, when I helped induct Nirvana into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which was a full circle moment,” Annie explains. “I wouldn’t be playing music if it wasn’t for Dave Grohl, and hearing Nirvana when I was nine and going, ‘Whatever the sound coming out of the speakers is, I need to be a part of that!’”

So when she texted the Foo Fighters frontman, asking if he’d lend drums to the new record. Grohl was happy to help and rolled up to Clark’s studio in his pick-up truck. In between takes, he’d smoke Parliaments with crew members and tell “great war stories” from his epic career over coffee and, er, more smokes. The collaboration yielded two fantastic tracks, ‘Broken Man’ and ‘Flea’, each boasting those familiar Grohl rhythms.

Foo Fighters live at Oxegen 2011

“I mean, he’s Dave Grohl!” says Annie, simply. “He’s a great songwriter, so he knows that his drumming, as bombastic as it can be, must always serve and elevate the song. With his power, Dave came in and took the songs to 11.”

Also appearing is another old friend, Welsh singer Cate Le Bon, whose 2022 opus Pompeii was an influence on All Born Screaming. The way I see it, All Born Screaming and Pompeii are equals: kindred spirits in conversation, exchanging insights like trading cards.

“First of all, that’s like the biggest compliment anyone’s ever given me,” says a chuffed Clark. “I love Pompeii so much. If the world were a fair place, Cate Le Bon would be the only thing on the airwaves. She’s a genius. She’s everything I’m not: patient with an inner calm. So I brought her in at a time when I was making the record and I was just sick of it, and sick of myself.

"I mean, everybody gets to that point when making a record. So I said to Cate that I’d been toiling away, and I didn’t know if it was any good. I just needed her ears on it, and she gave really great insights. I played her one song and her take was that ‘these drums are a bully’, and she was so right – they were bullying the song!

“In a larger sense, as an artist, the point is not to have to try to be it – you are it and embody it. Then you can share it. So where I would be trying to fabricate excitement in places, to satiate the cocaine-rat-in-the-maze part of my brain, Cate gives a song space and lets it breathe.”

Cate Le Bon

But for all the new creative avenues, there comes the risk of dead-ends and rabbit holes. The title track of All Born Screaming presented just such a challenge.

“I wasn’t sure how to put all the pieces together,” St. Vincent says of the song. “There was too much going on in the rhythm section and I didn’t know if it was any good. But Cate was like, ‘Give me a beer, a bass and two hours, and I can crack the code.’”

It’s one thing to complete a record, but presenting it live is another challenge entirely. Having nailed the nuances of All Born Screaming, Clark is buzzing to bring the album to Dublin’s 3Olympia next month. What can we expect when she comes to town?

“So, you show up and it’s just me and an acoustic guitar, playing a song in half-time,” she says, howling with laughter. “No, haha! Conceptually, the show starts in hell and ends in heaven.”

Spoken like a true saint.

“It’s wild. The show’s a little like, ‘Hide the children, the freaks are coming to town!’” Okay, now we’re talking. “I like people to walk away going, ‘I’m not sure what I just saw, but I’m really moved by it,’” says Annie. “So it’ll be wild, dangerous and intense. I can’t wait to be back. I love Dublin!”

St Vincent at Electric Picnic 2018. Copyright Miguel Ruiz

Has she been listening to any Irish artists of late?

“I love Fontaines D.C., they’re incredible,” she answers. “They came to my Royal Albert Hall show, though I didn’t get to see them. But I DMed with them afterwards. I fucking love that band. They’re definitely my number one.”

The grá hardly stops there. On All Born Screaming, Clark enlisted two Irish sonic polymaths to bring the album to fruition, with a nod to her strong Irish heritage (80%, that is!).

“It should be noted that a good Cork lad named Cian Riordan engineered this record,” she says. “And a lovely Dubliner named Ruairi O’Flaherty was the mastering engineer. So, we kept it proud!”

We discuss the album cover, which is shot by Alex Da Corte and sees St. Vincent engulfed in flames, doubled over and chaotically swinging her arms, as the blaze begins to consume her. Whether she’s fanning the fire or shaking it off is unclear. Perhaps it’s both. The paradox hardly stops there.

“When the baby comes out screaming, it’s the best, it means it’s alive,” Clark reiterates. “But in another context, we’re all born in protest, as we didn’t ask to be born. It’s terrifying to be alive, it’s ecstatic to be alive. It’s everything.”

As she tells me this, the opening lines to Laurie Anderson’s song ‘Born, Never Asked’ come into my head: “You were born, and so you’re free / So, happy birthday”. As with All Born Screaming, there’s a sense that, for all the inevitable sturm und drang that comes with life, there’s also freedom and opportunity – and isn’t that worth raising a glass to?

“All of us live in a time where it feels increasingly like the world is on fire,” says Clark. “But I think there’s hope and opportunities for compassion and humanity. We’re all in this together. Let’s go!”

St Vincent plays 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Sunday, October 13.