A strange encounter with St Vincent

"are you geared up for this?"
St vincent's press officer is making small speak in advance of our interview, on a sizzling warm summer's day in london.
"sure," i respond. I've listened to her new album. I've made copious notes. I've jotted down approximately  dozen questions.
"no, however are you prepared for this?" he asks.
"i'm no longer positive what you suggest."
"oh, you will see."
Sounds ominous...
St vincentimage copyrightnedda afsari
Image caption
The singer says the inspiration for her new paintings is "the cramps gambling at a mental organization"
A couple of minutes later, a cloaked girl appears and, without speakme, leads me by the hand into the road, thru a fireplace escape and into a bare concrete room.
She gestures to a billboard-sized poster of st vincent, which has a non-disclosure settlement at the bottom. I sign it in pink felt tip, and am brought about a prefabricated timber dice. The monk female unbolts a door, slightly huge sufficient for a medium-sized labrador, and that i hunch thru.
Internal, the walls are shiny pink. There are  red trendy lamps, with pink light bulbs, located in opposite corners. And there, sitting at a reasonably-priced wooden table, is st vincent, playing ambient guitar music through her iphone.
Her hair is, i suppose, painted blue and cut in a close bob. She makes unwavering eye touch as we shake hands and the door is close (locked?) in the back of me.
"wait til the paint fumes get to you," she deadpans. "it is going to be surely great."
As she describes the room - "it's like a psychedelic womb" - the 34-yr-old sips a drink via a flexible straw it is been moulded into the phrase "no".
"that is in case there's a yes or absolute confidence. We can simply save time."
This, i think, will not be your common interview.
St vincent performs the guitarimage copyrightgetty images
Photo caption
The musician has designed her own logo of guitar, that is greater ergonomically desirable to women's bodies
St vincent is here, ostensibly, to sell her new album masseduction (this is "mass seduction", not "mass training"). It's the comply with-up to 2014's st vincent, an expectation-defying art-pop report that cemented texas-born annie clark as certainly one of her technology's best guitarists.
If something, the brand new document is even higher - pitching wildly between jittery electronics and despondent ballads as clark exposes her emotions on sex, drugs and unhappiness.
"it is an exceptionally sad album," she says. "pretty manic and painful.
"i pay attention to it, and some points of the album are so sad it makes me chortle. It's in order that tragic. However this is human life."
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The primary unmarried, ny, is a disarmingly simple ode to lost love.
"new york isn't new york with out you, love," she sings over lonely piano chords, with the pulsing heartbeat of the metropolis submerged deep within the blend.
"it is a form of dance song which you concentrate to for your bed and cry," she says.
Annie clark and cara delevigneimage copyrightgetty photos
Picture caption
Clark have become a tabloid fixture at some stage in her courting with cara delevingne
New york is one in every of several wreck-up songs on the album. It is safe to count on they're approximately cara delevingne, the elaborately-eyebrowed supermodel she dated for 18 months until ultimate september - but clark isn't going into specifics.
"songs are rorschach checks," she deflects, regarding the inkblot psychological assessments.
"the interpretation of the tune, or the sensation of the music, has more to do with the listener than it does with my intention and i am best with that.
"but that song's a love letter to big apple, simply, and to me it's a composite of such a lot of people and so many stories in ny."
The album additionally keeps the saga of johnny, who first seemed on st vincent's debut album, marry me. Back then, she pleaded to be his partner, making a song, "let's do what mary and joseph did / without the child".
Via her fourth record, though, they had been distant and estranged, as he embraced big apple's party scene. Inside the ultra-modern instalment, johnny is depending on drugs and residing on the road. When clark crosses his course, he accuses her of abandoning him.
"what happened to blood. Our family?" he hisses. "annie, how should you do that to me?"
It's heartbreaking, and savagely self-important - however clark won't say whether or not it is based on a real man or woman.
"all and sundry's real and all and sundry's a composite," she replies.
St vincentimage copyrightnedda afsari
Photograph caption
"it would not make experience to make an entire report that's brightly colored and colourful and then do an interview in a tea room."
It appears evasive. It's far evasive. However the singer is a considerate, thoughtful interviewee. She seems to flavor the questions, chewing them over before answering. Her responses are unique, but by no means abrupt.
So why, then, are we speaking internal a shiny red tardis?
The point, clark explains, is to position both of us "in uncomfortable positions".
"you have accomplished 1,000,000 interviews. I've carried out 1,000,000 interviews. There is only so generally you can repeat your wikipedia page to a person.
"so what occurs if we shake that up? Perhaps you and i react in a different way, and that's interesting."
What sincerely occurs is that we spend 15 minutes talking approximately the method of being interviewed.
She winces as she remembers a journalist quizzing her at the time she played the big apple at the same time as dressed as a toilet.
"i had just made a horror film," she says, referencing her brief film birthday celebration, "and this become a fancy dress from it".
"then i had an interviewer say to me, 'become that a few freudian show, as in case you sense you've been pissed upon?'
"i used to be like, 'wow, that says an entire lot more about you than it does about me.'"


Media captionhighlights of st vincent at glastonbury 2014
Basically, although, she's bored of being requested the identical antique questions.
"i'll come up with an example!" she says, grabbing her smartphone and scrolling thru a sequence of approximately 30 voice memos.
"i am getting asked to justify my existence as a lady in track all the time, so here is an example of some thing i might say."
She clicks play and sits lower back in her chair, arms crossed. Her voice, in a bored monotone, emits from the speaker.
"being a lady in track means being requested approximately being a woman in music. And while you question me a question about being a female in track, what you're virtually doing is supplying me with  very tired narratives, and asking me to pick considered one of them.
"the first one is going like this: i'm a sufferer, and now could be the time to listing, in fantastic element, my many grievances with a view to assert my area in the hierarchy of victimhood.
"or you're asking me to defend now, in phrases, as if my work wasn't sufficient, why i deserve a spot at the table.
"i refuse to participate in both narrative."
Her protest duly cited, we continue to more secure ground.
Clark notes that her new album turned into finished precisely 10 years after her debut become launched, and marvels that she's made it this a ways.
"i have been glad every vicinity that i have been - and each place that i've been, i felt like i had made it. Even if i was playing pizza parlours, or clubs in london for six humans - 3 of whom had been listening - i was like, 'i'm playing in london!'
"so for me, it's been a consistent, irrepressible choice to make things."
St vincent within the studioimage copyright@st_vincent / instagram
Photograph caption
The album was recorded in the big apple, and is about to seem in two versions - one electronic and one acoustic
Making this album with jack antonoff (taylor quick, lorde), she hired the absurdist methods of her idols david bowie and david byrne, setting "motivational phrases" at the song stand as she sang.
One, shared on instagram final year, virtually examine "dead meat."
"every so often, when you're doing vocal takes you have got a pad and pencil there so you could make notes, and i would subconsciously written 'lifeless meat'. It just made me snort that that turned into something became popping out of my brain at that time."
Her freudian scribbling had no impact at the song, although. "self laceration is simply some other form of ego. It would not certainly assist," she insists.
"i've found out that the hard way. Consider me, it's no longer that usable. You genuinely have to get from your very own way, specially when making a song."
And that, it transpires, is what clearly motivates her - the "meditative nation" she achieves whilst making song.
"i want it. And i realize i want it while i have never performed it for some time and i experience very agitated.
"you understand, it's like some human beings get definitely annoyed and indignant and they may be like, 'oh, i need to have an orgasm!'. And you then do this and you experience so much better. It is just that easy."
At that moment, the cloaked lady knocks on the door and our time is up.
"thanks very a lot, it turned into a pride to satisfy you," says clark.
"you too," i reply, expressing relief that i failed to trigger any of her "inventory solutions".