St. Vincent: Fear the Future Tour

Annie Clark, the singer and guitarist who performs under the moniker St. Vincent, is absolutely riveting to see live. She was the only performer on stage the other night at the Electric Factory and was completely engrossing. Clark is a surgeon on the guitar. Her Fear the Future Tour, from musicality to visuals to overall concept, was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.

Clark opened under a single stark spotlight, dressed in a hot-pink leotard and thigh-high boots, singing “Marry Me” on the edge of the stage with the curtain opened just slightly. There was a huge cheer at the end of the song when an assistant handed Clark her first electric guitar of the night. The curtain opened a little after each song to reveal more and more of the stage as she went chronologically through St. Vincent’s first four albums, shredding songs such as “Actor Out of Work” and “Cheerleader.”

A trio of the best of the songs from the St. Vincent album came next as the stage opened up a little more to reveal a backdrop of a woman’s face stylized to look like a vampire. “Digital Witness” and “Rattlesnake” were intense, while the can’t-sit-still “Birth in Reverse,” sounding like a lost track from Prince’s Dirty Mind or Controversy, was apocalyptic.

Everybody figured out pretty fast where the set list was going, so it wasn’t a surprise when after a short intermission, Clark performed the recently released St. Vincent album, the simply fantastic MASSEDUCTION, in its entirety. At this point, the simple but effective stage exploded into Technicolor, with a unique video playing behind Clark for almost every song. (The concert also was preceded by a short film directed by Clark, The Birthday Party, involving a woman whose husband drops dead shortly before her child’s birthday party and she dresses him in a panda suit to keep the girl from finding out about it. It was a comedy.)

There was a lot to unpack in the videos (which were more like repeating loops of images than a coherent story) but in them, Clark appears as some sort of model inspecting the odd world around her almost like an alien, with a distinct ‘60s primary-color vibe. You could read her facial expression as bored or detached or thoughtful, and I’m not sure what to make of it, but it was very compelling.

The videos added much to the performance, depicting Clark as a comment on sexiness while being sexy at the same time. This worked for the more fun tracks on MASSEDUCTION, like the title track, “Pills” and the Bowie-influenced “Sugarboy” but also worked for the more introspective songs. There was some detachment and artifice in the images, a contrast to the sometimes raw lyrics of songs like “New York,” “Happy Birthday, Johnny,” “Smoking Section” and “Los Ageless” (“How can anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind too?”).

Throughout the show, the crew kept taking away used guitars and bringing Clark fresh color-coded guitars, almost after every song. I assumed this was to retune the instruments from being banged up from a performance. But every time someone took a used guitar away from Clark, it seemed more like she was done with it forever, like she broke it through sheer exuberance and skill, and nobody could use it again. Like each guitar was just another body she ravaged with her intensity.