At the Greek Theatre Friday night, St. Vincent, a.k.a. Annie Clark, dedicated All Born Screaming’s “The Sweetest Fruit,” a tribute to queer trailblazers lost too soon, to anyone in the audience who’s ever felt different or excluded—everyone in the audience, the singer and multi-instrumentalist speculated. Despite the song’s tragic subject matter, and the darkness cast across Clark’s latest album, the show was, as she put it, a party.
The show was a challenge of stamina and musicianship, comprising 20 tightly paced songs that demanded Clark’s full vocal range and near-constant guitar playing. Vocally, she was in peak form, closing her eyes and pulling in close to the mic to gnash on every last lyric of “Flea”: “Drip you in diamonds, pour you in cream/You will be mine for eternity.” And when she played the snarling, seductive “Surgeon,” Clark’s fingers blazed across the neck of one of her signature electric guitars as she picked out the song’s demanding runs.
Clark didn’t just perform her songs, she embodied them, honing her movements and facial expressions to their distinct character and musicality. In one of many moments of impish humor, she brought the fluttering intro of “Marrow” to life by scooting across the stage on tiptoe, sharply contrasting the rigid poses she used to draw out the theme of conformity in “Big Time Nothing.” For her grippingly theatrical rendition of the woozy “Dilettante,” she feigned drunkenness, tripping over her feet in sync with the drums and delivering her lyrics as if they were a late-night voicemail to a crush: “You’re like a party I heard through the wall/Invite me.”
Yet Clark elicited the biggest reactions when she really let loose, like when she screamed the confrontational lyrics of “Broken Man” and crowd-surfed during “Krokodil.” In other words, when she embraced her status as a modern-day rock star. And like a rock star, Clark was totally in her element, so secure in her inimitable talents and the synergy she developed with a completely captivated audience that she allowed herself room to party.
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