By Haley Yates
On my way to the House of Blues Friday night, blasting Dallasite St. Vincent’s new self-titled album “St. Vincent,” I looked over to my friend sitting in the passenger’s seat and a smile blew up on my face. Annie Clark – who goes by her stage name St. Vincent – was in Dallas for the first time since her album’s release and in just minutes her face would be within spitting distance of me singing the words to “Digital Witness” in real life.
“St. Vincent” made its debut in February, and Clark said she had more confidence in the album and described it as “extroverted” in an interview with the Dallas Observer. She played almost every song from the album, throwing in some tunes from her 2011 album “Strange Mercy.”
Watching Clark on stage is like being at a circus, only with more rock n’ roll. Her now signature pouf of bleached hair was a wicked storm cloud following her around as she wailed on her guitar and shouted to the audience “I – I – I – I – I don’t wanna be a cheerleader no more.”
The stage held a simple set. In the far left corner drummer Matt Johnson set a steady beat for each song, and opposite him on the keyboard sat Daniel Mintseris. Between them a set of pink platforms stood as the only prop. Toko Yasuda stationed herself at a moog synthesizer upstage left singing backup and occasionally joined Clark in some deranged robotic choreography.
Between songs, a blackout consumed the audience, and Clark would engage with her audience in a far-away tone. Her bulging eyes would look past the crowd as she said things like “when you ride the DART rail from Lake Highlands to Downtown, you look around at everyone in the bus with you and think…we are all going to die someday.”
Clark shuffled back and forth in unison with Yasuda, the strobing lights creating a stop motion effect and turning the two into wind up dolls skittering about the stage. During her more sensual songs like “I Prefer Your Love,” she fell languidly off of the pink platforms melting to the floor like a puddle of ice cream.
She connected with the Dallas crowd at the end of the show when she said “Once when you were young, you told a lie and got sick the day after. Then you remembered, you don’t believe in retribution. But just in case, you built a throne out of Shiner Bock cans, The Dallas Morning News, aluminum foil and Whataburger.”
The last song of the night was an a cappella version of “Strange Mercy” from her album released in 2011 “Strange Mercy.” The crowd became silent as she bellowed out the first line “Oh little one I know you’ve been tired for a long long time,” and slowly voices from the crowd joined in until everyone was shouting the chorus line “If I ever meet that dirty police man who roughed you up.”