St Vincent at Latitude 2009
The first thing that strikes you when St Vincent take to the stage is just how small and frail lead singer and songwriter Annie Clark is. Anyone unfamiliar with St Vincent’s music would seriously question the sanity of anyone trying to describe the noise and power that Clark bashes and battles out of her guitar, especially when the delicate tones of ‘The Strangers’ opens the set wobbling under the strain of being unfurled in front of such a large audience. But as the song builds and the crackle of guitar starts to bubble under the surface of the violin a new side of the vulnerable looking singer is slowly revealed.
She throttles the guitar like it’s a wild beast that’s desperately trying to reach around and bite her. The sound that she chokes out of the animal is a monolithic guttural roar, angry and spluttering, just for the music to drop off again, beast tamed, back to harmonious delicate strings and woodwind.
It’s a trick that St Vincent pulls out again and again during a set focused largely on new album ‘Actor’. Like a bag of apples with rotten cores, it’s that exciting darker edge that makes them really stand out from the rest of the festival line up. They finish on ‘Marrow’ which jags about like a malfunctioning robot coughing out a broken lullaby, Clark keeping a wary eye on her backing band as she beats out another dirty riff and leads them to a frenetic climax.