1 of 5 2 of 5 Some acts hit the ground fully formed and running, others take a while to truly come into their own. That’s another way of saying that, after doing time as a hired gun with the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, Annie Clark didn’t exactly rocket into the mainstream after going solo. In hindsight, what a blessing.
If you were there from the start—2007’s bedroom-spawned project Marry Me —that means you might have been there at the Lamplighter when Clark made her Vancouver debut as St. Vincent, proving herself as magnetic as a performer as she was blazing-hot as a guitar player. The climb from there has been a gradual one, proving, once again, that North America will always love the simple stupidity of the Ramones more than it will ever love the genre-smashing risk-taking of the Refused.
Initial records found St. Vincent carving out a reputation for songwriting as artsy as it was ambitious. As a result, on some level, she struggled to make a connection with those outside her fan base.
Early indie-pop songs, for example, don’t come any more haunting than “The Strangers”, a retro-futuristic marvel that sounds like 1920s Paris re-imagined by turn-of-the-millennium Williamsburg. Found on her second album Actor , “The Strangers” was perhaps the first sign we got that Clark was bound for greatness—an artist already operating on an astral plane of her own making. Actor was a record that had its own “score consultant”, with instruments tapped fo.