8/4/7, Los Angeles: Texas songstress St. Vincent (nee Annie Clark) is like the weird theatre girl from your high school, except exceedingly talented and cute as hell. Her huge, anime-like eyes give her an irresistible deer-in-headlights look, and she backs up said looks with an awesome voice, quirky songwriting and some fearsome guitar chops. Backed by three grungy gents on bass, violin and drums (plus a smattering of keyboards thrown in for added ambience), St. Vincent enchanted the packed Echo Saturday night with a string of tunes from her lush debut Marry Me.
Her songs don't conform to the usual verse-chorus-verse structure, instead meandering through proggy orchestral pop sounds and often culminating in Sonic Youthy bursts of guitar noise. At the end of her best song "Now Now," Clark even ripped off a guitar string and threw her axe down in a display of mock rebelliouness. Later, she used a severed mannequin arm as percussion ("You should see what we did to the rest of her," she quipped).
The brief encore consisted of the Magnetic Fields' "Yeah! Oh Yeah!", duetted by Clark and special guest John Vanderslice, and Clark's haunting solo take on Nico's "These Days."
Cleary destined for cult status, Clark (as a solo act) is opening for the National on their upcoming tour.
Photos by the sportily-dressed Chinapixie.
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