St. Vincent part 1

Today we'll be examining the life and work of a well-respected artist who's been around for the last 10 years or so. She was born Anne Erin Clark in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1982 and she goes by the name of St. Vincent.

She began playing the guitar at the age of 12 and, as a teenager, worked as a roadie for her uncle and aunt, Tuck Andress and Patti Cathcart, of the guitar-vocal jazz duo Tuck & Patti. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Lake Highlands High School, where she participated in theater and the school's jazz band, and was a classmate of Mark Salling (who later went on to star in the series Glee).

She attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston for three years before dropping out. In retrospect, she said, "I think that with music school and art school, or school in any form, there has to be some system of grading and measurement. The things they can teach you are quantifiable. While all that is good and has its place, at some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music." In 2003, during her time at Berklee, she released an EP with fellow students entitled Ratsliveonnoevilstar.

Here's opening track Bliss:

Shortly after leaving Berklee, Clark returned home to Texas where she joined The Polyphonic Spree just before their embarking on a European tour. She does not appear on the record they released that year, Together We're Heavy (2004), but since we've mentioned The Polyphonic Spree, which is a band that I highly appreciate, here's a song from that album, so that you can form your own opinion. (What do you think Record Man, AFHI and Phoenix?)

Clark left The Polyphonic Spree and joined Sufjan Stevens' touring band in 2006. Sufjan Stevens is definitely one of the best artists of the 21st Century. There is speculation that Sufjan may be gay or bisexual, but nothing is confirmed, so I cannot include him in this list as a separate entry. I will sneak him in through this back door though. The 2006 tour would probably have been all about the best reviewed album of 2005, and my favorite Sufjan album, Illinois. Here's an absolutely beautiful track called Chicago:

This is a chillingly haunting song about a most unlikely subject: notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr.

From the same album, The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us has lyrics that could be construed as gay-themed:

I can't explain the state that I'm in

The state of my heart, he was my best friend

Into the car, from the back seat

Oh admiration in falling asleep

All of my powers, day after day

I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed

Deep in the tower, the prairies below

I can tell you, the telling gets old

Terrible sting and terrible storm

I can tell you the day we were born

My friend is gone, he ran away

I can tell you, I love him each day

Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged

I can tell you I love him each day

Terrible sting, terrible storm

I can tell you...

Back to Ann Clark/St. Vincent, during that same year (2006), she released a 3-son tour EP called Paris Is Burning, the title inspired by the groundbreaking queer documentary by Jennie Livingston. Here's the title track:

There is also a cover of a Jackson Browne song, These Days, which was first sung by Nico.

In an interview on The Colbert Report, she said that she "took [her] moniker from a Nick Cave song, which refers to the hospital in which Dylan Thomas died. "The reference is to the line "And Dylan Thomas died drunk in / St. Vincent's hospital" from Cave's song "There She Goes my Beautiful World" off the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. The name is also a reference to her great-grandmother, whose middle name was St. Vincent. If you want to know who Nick Cave is or if you already know him and want to read more about him, don't worry: he will appear in the course of this series.

Her debut album, Marry Me, was released in July 2007. The album was very well received by critics, with Clark being compared to the likes of Kate Bush and David Bowie. The three tracks of the Paris Is Burning EP also appear in this album. In Ann's own words: "While I was opening for Sufjan in London, the people from Beggars Banquet were there, so I got a record deal based off of that performance. Mike Garson had recorded with The Polyphonic Spree on The Fragile Army, so I got to know him, and he was a really, really kind, sweet guy. He was doing this thing on MySpace at the time where people would basically send him tracks, and he would do his amazing Mike Garson thing on top of it. I think that's how we did it: I sent him my song Your Lips Are Red and he just did his awesome crazy Mike Garson thing."

If you don't know who Mike Garson is, it's the guy who plays paino amazingly in this Bowie track:

Here he is in St. Vincent's Your Lips Are Red:

From the same album, here's Jesus Saves, I Spend:

In 2008, Clark was nominated for three PLUG Independent Music Awards: New Artist of the Year, Female Artist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year. On March 6, 2008, she won the PLUG Female Artist of the Year award.

The second album, entitled Actor, was released in May 2009. The album was also well received and gained more commercial attention than its predecessor. Opening track The Strangers was #492 on Pitchfork's list of the top tracks of the 2000s.

Pitchfork also had Actor out of Work at #52 on its list of the year's top tracks.

Just the Same but Brand New is another inspired track.

Tomorrow we'll have the rest of St. Vincent's story. Till then...