St. Vincent at Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Annie Clark performs in Prospect Park August 9, 2014. All photos by Eli Jace.

It is fifteen years, two-hundred and twenty-one days into the 21st Century. August 9, 2014. St. Vincent -- that’s Annie Clark in Brooklyn -- stands in the shadows of the Celebrate Brooklyn! stage in Prospect Park. She comes to take aim at our fractured, disseminated digital lives and hold our focus for one night.

As Clark stands in the dark an electro-computer voice reads a disclaimer. Please refrain from capturing the concert with all digital devices. I snapped two quick blurred images, posted one to Twitter and felt horrible about myself. 

The show was the finale to Celebrate Brooklyn!'s free summer concert series and was easily the most anticipated. The line to enter curled around and past the park. At the entrance, signs warned of the use of strobe lights--always a positive sign.

Clark's form came into view as the strobe lights sputtered for the opening fuzz of "Rattlesnake." She stood straight and defiant dressed in black stockings, black leather skirt and a white button-down top. When the solo came, she rocked up and down like she was blowing in the wind. Her frazzled newsprint-colored fluff of hair shimmered and her high cheekbones reflected each flash of light like a shield.

The song opens St. Vincent, Clark’s fourth album, released early this year. The album is sure to fit at the top of every year-end best-of list. The setlist was heavy with new songs and ones from Strange Mercy from 2011. Further back, off Actor, “Marrow” and "Actor Out of Work," a tightly wound chunk of krautrock, showed up early in the first half.

Clark’s four-member band was impressively locked in. The colorful arrangements of the recordings were expertly re-contextualized on the stage. Songs were kept mostly intact as heard on record, but there were pockets left open wide for improvisation and expansion.  

Bassist Toko Yasuda and Clark interlocked their guitars beautifully for the brain-tingling climax of "Surgeon.” Their subtle syncopated choreography charged on “Birth in Reverse" and other songs. Toward the back of the stage sat a white three-block pyramid. Clark’s soapbox. She hopped up the white steps for "Cheerleader," pounding her black high heel on the top step.
Clark wore the expression of a Stepford Wife pixie doll. She moved in a mechanized drone, focused on the performance she was engaged in. Surely she was sweating, but her makeup never smeared. She changed guitars as often as some pop divas change outfits. An assistant rushed out between songs with a fresh axe in hand. She stayed close to the microphone, stepping back momentarily to go cross-eyed in a hypnotic guitar excursion.

Before "Every Tear Disappears" Clark took a moment to welcome the "freaks and the others" in the audience. She called out the millennials chiding them for the generation they were born into, then launched everyone further into space.

She followed the spotlight to the white block pyramid for "I Prefer Your Love." The sweet rhapsodic ballad rocked back and forth as Clark sat, folding her legs on the second step. "All the good in me is because of you,” she serenaded, her gaze growing distant. “It's true.” 

As the feedback rang out, Clark fell to the pyramid steps like a piece of jelly. She writhed and spilled over the steps, pulling herself across each one until she slumped head-first to the bottom, legs crossed and pointed upward in a v-shape.

Toward the end of the set Clark’s face took on that of a growling bobcat, lip upturned. She turned feisty, trying to rile the sitting crowd into consciousness, spitting curses between songs. During a few, she added extra spite to the lyrics. "You traced the Andes with your index," she sung on "Prince Johnny," "and bragged of when and who you're gonna fuck next."

The stuttering snare shuffle on "Huey Newton" turned the energy up. When Clark cooed, "It was a lonely, lonely winter," a chill swept through the crowd. Her rising falsetto then lead us blindly into the tar-thick guitar crunch of the song's last blistering half. "Entombed in the shrine of zeros and ones," Clark screeched, "You know."

The nerve-pinching space-grind of "Bring Me Your Loves" finalized the proper set. Clark took us off our leash and exited into the dark, but we would not leave. We wanted more. After a 14-song set that thrilled, exasperated and numbed the senses, the band returned for a skull-cracking encore.

Clark walked on alone. She took our excitement and anticipation and molded it in her palm like a clump of clay. She stepped to the block pyramid's top step frosted by a single spotlight beam and eased into “Strange Mercy.” She teased out each note of the honey sweet ballad, letting them hang in the air. The crowd fell into a collective trance, growing so quiet, the cicadas sizzling on the tree branches could be heard between the bars. "If I ever meet the dirty the police man who roughed you up," she sung with alarming relevance, "No. I don't know what."

A second song in the encore of a free show is a wonderful thing. What St. Vincent gave us was an extra show within the show. "Year of the Tiger," off Strange Mercy, dumped onto the stage with booming guitars and buzzing electronics. For a moment it felt as though all of Brooklyn was put on standby. 

As the song played through, it began to take another shape. It grew limbs and threw a tantrum. The strobes flickered incessantly with the clashing energy. Clark finally gave in to her punk thrash heart, shredding like Kurt Cobain on live TV and tumbled into the collecting crowd of VIP at the front. Feedback rang out. 

She ended with "Your Lips Are Red," off Marry Me. The pounding psychotic episode, with chants of “Ashes in downtown, ashes in downtown,” just about sucked the remaining brain nodes from everyone’s head.

Free or not, St. Vincent at Prospect Park was one of New York City's top shows this year.   

**

A few days after the performance Clark appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, sitting in for two nights with the 8G Band. She batted her eyelashes while Meyers informed his television audience of the 15,000 people that packed into Prospect Park to see her. "I did that," she quietly purred against the blare of television lighting. Why, yes Annie. You sure fucking did. 

PHOTOSET: St. Vincent at Prospect Park, Brooklyn