{"id":1716,"date":"2024-08-06T13:48:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T13:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2024-08-06T13:48:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T13:48:14","slug":"boundaries-excess-masturbation-and-anger-st-vincent-the-enigma-who-redesigned-pop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/2024\/08\/06\/boundaries-excess-masturbation-and-anger-st-vincent-the-enigma-who-redesigned-pop\/","title":{"rendered":"Boundaries, excess masturbation and anger: St Vincent, the enigma who redesigned pop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][et_pb_code module_class=&#8221;custom-cat&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"fp-mojo-presents\"><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t<\/p>\n<div class=\"fp-col-1\"><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t\t<pee class=\"tac text-white bold\">Q<\/pee><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t<\/div>\n<p><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t<\/p>\n<div class=\"fp-col-2\"><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t\t<pee class=\"tac text-grey bold\">GOLD<\/pee><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] -->\t<\/div>\n<p><!-- [et_pb_line_break_holder] --><\/div>\n<p>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;article-title&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_font_size=&#8221;68px&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;40px||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"p1\">The Prime Of Miss Annie E. Clark<\/h1>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;intro-text&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2017 we were living through the first flush of what in the future will be known as The Era Of St. Vincent. Niall Doherty stepped out into the cold of the Midwest with Annie Erin Clark to hear how her alter ego redesigned pop and performance in her own image, and had designs on the film and art worlds in motion too. \u201cI got all that shit done,\u201d she says. \u201cDid all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;credit-main&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Words by <span style=\"color: #999999\">Niall Doherty<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=&#8221;https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/St.-Vincent-11-26-17-210_RT.jpg&#8221; title_text=&#8221;St. Vincent 11-26-17 210_RT&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;image-gallery-caption&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_font=&#8221;|300|||||||&#8221; text_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;-10px||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>Curtain call: St. Vincent, Beyond Studios, Washington DC, 26 November, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;text-with-dropcap&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1 has-dropcap\">One day back in March, Annie Clark stood on Seventh Avenue in New York and considered walking into the nearest emergency department. The creative dynamo behind St. Vincent was nearing completion of her new album at the same time as writing one film and pitching two others. She was also overseeing an art installation and had videos to shoot and concepts to come up with. Everywhere she looked, deadlines loomed and, now, in the middle of one of the busiest streets in one of the busiest cities, she was having a monstrous panic attack. But Clark didn\u2019t go to hospital that day. She did what she always does: she took a deep breath and made a plan.<\/p>\n<p>The thing the 35-year-old Texan is best at is getting things done. She knows how to make things happen. Clark has spent much of her life feeling shy and nervous, but over the course of her career, she has learnt to take charge. She likes making decisions because it alleviates the stress and anxiety of not having a plan. \u201cI fucking got all of that shit done,\u201d Clark says now, eight months later. \u201cI got through it. I got all of it done. Did all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indianapolis, November 2017. The second biggest city in the Midwest is an urban sprawl of anonymous blocks that stretch into the distance, with a striking monument and some big hotels in the middle of it and not much else. It\u2019s for this reason that the Old National Centre sticks out. \u2028A venue situated in the Downtown area, it belongs to the Murat Shriners of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, a freemason organisation who recognised that, even in the late 1800s, Indianapolis needed something. It\u2019s now a venue and tonight it\u2019s playing host to St. Vincent\u2019s Fear The Future tour, a run of dates named after one of the tracks from Masseduction, her excellent fifth album.<\/p>\n<p>Clark has appeared in many eye-poppingly flamboyant outfits over the past year or so, wearing thigh-high leather boots and a cone bra with duct tape over the nipples while performing on Ellen, joining Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh on Graham Norton\u2019s sofa while wearing a PVC bunny outfit and dressing up as a toilet for a show in New York in 2016. Deep within the bowels of the Egyptian Room, an 1800-capacity venue inside the Old National Theatre, though, she\u2019s curled up on a sofa in her dressing room in her pyjamas, eating from a bunch of red grapes bigger than her head. \u201cIt\u2019s so big, it\u2019s heavy. I\u2019m gonna eat it like a Roman,\u201d she says, craning it above her, picking at them with her mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Masseduction feels like a culmination for Clark, the mainstream breakthrough her decade-long solo career has been shimmying towards. Each of her records has been a leap forward and 2014\u2019s Grammy Award-winning self-titled fourth suggested she could be a genuine star. Masseduction is her most accessible album yet, folding the experimentalist indie quirks of her early work into sophisticated and catchy twisted pop. She\u2019s like a cross between Prince, Lady Gaga and PJ Harvey, an arch conceptualist who knows that if the idea is good, the songs have to be better. The album\u2019s centrepiece track New York, either about her ex-girlfriend Cara Delevingne, or David Bowie dying, or a friend moving away from the city, or all three, is one of those songs whose warm, melancholic familiarity makes it feel like it\u2019s been around forever.<\/p>\n<p>Like Lorde, Clark is emblematic of a new wave of artists for whom there are no boundaries. Clark can cut it with the fusty old rockers (she\u2019s appeared onstage with Pearl Jam, stood in for Kurt Cobain when Nirvana were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and made an album with David Byrne), the fusty new rockers (she\u2019s collaborated with The National and Bon Iver, and used to be in Sufjan Stevens\u2019s backing band) at the same time as being one of the faces of Tiffany\u2019s advertising campaign and curating House Of Peroni, a pop-up art installation in New York. Her heroes aren\u2019t the usual roll call of rock or pop icons, but French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and influential choreographers Pina Bausch and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pull-quote&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">\u201cIt\u2019s about having ideas. If you have ideas, you can figure out how to make it happen.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pullquote-name&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; header_3_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_3_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_3_font_size=&#8221;38px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">St Vincent<\/h3>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; module_class=&#8221;custom-divider&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;text-with-dropcap&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1 has-dropcap\">Clark is on the road on her own at the moment. The current show, which features her singing and playing along to a backing track in front of sleek visuals, requires no band and so her long-serving group are sitting this stint out. They will be back in the spring for the second leg of shows. Clark misses them but has more than enough to keep her occupied. On the road, she wakes up at 9am, trawls through her emails, heads out to get coffee, and then gets to work, planning out \u201call the little million things to do.\u201d The show is being refined from day-to-day. When that\u2019s done, Clark puts her director hat on and continues her notes on the script for The Picture Of Dorian Gray, her first feature film. It will star a female protagonist and it\u2019s being written by David Burke, a screenwriter who has worked with Paul Verhoeven.<\/p>\n<p>Clark co-wrote and directed her first film, a horror short called The Birthday Party, last year and loved it. Directing is about vision, she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about having ideas. If you have ideas, you can figure out how to make it happen.\u201d She says film-making and music are about teamwork and assembling great people around you. \u201cIt\u2019s knowing when to push your ideas and insist on them being exactly so and knowing when to let really talented people run with it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Clark has no misgivings about entering an industry engulfed in sexual harassment scandals. She bristles at the mention of it. \u201cYou mean, am I worried someone is going to masturbate in front of me?\u201d she snaps. \u201cI\u2019m the fuckin\u2019 director, man. I\u2019m the director. Acting is a really tricky profession because it only exists in relation to other people. The dynamic for actors oftentimes is being dependent on people to give you a job and with predatory people in places of power, looking at people who are dependent on them for work, it makes it easier for predatory people to prey. But I want to direct, and usually it\u2019s directors exploiting people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She says all the people she\u2019s met in the film industry are intelligent and not sleazy. She can\u2019t imagine a time where she would make films and not make music, though. \u2028\u201cI\u2019d never not do music,\u201d she says. \u201cI have to. It\u2019s like when you walk around and you\u2019re like, \u2018Why am I so angry today? Oh, I haven\u2019t come in three days\u2019 or whatever. I have the same thing about music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also keeping her busy on the road are her \u201csoundcheck parties\u201d. These intimate meet-and-greets with fans entail a short acoustic performance and a chat afterwards. Clark loves doing them as much as doing the gig. \u201cI\u2019ve never done anything like that before,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a nice counter-point to the very stylised nature of the show.\u201d Clark wanted to personally interact with people and find out how they\u2019re feeling \u201cbecause the state of the world is so insane.\u201d She says that people are very raw but there are \u201ckernels of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been enlightening for her to see how broad her crowd is. \u201cIt\u2019s dudes in their 60s to 15-year-old girls to, like, everyone in-between. It\u2019s really rad.\u201d She\u2019s designed her own cocktail, The Slow Disco, for the occasion. It\u2019s her take on Ranch Water, a drink originating from west Texas, silver tequila mixed with Topo Chico, chile para frutas and lime. But Clark doesn\u2019t partake herself. She has a shot of tequila before showtime but she can\u2019t \u201cthrow down\u201d. There\u2019s too much to do. \u201cI\u2019m onstage for two and a half hours a day, so it\u2019s not like a thing I can afford to be hungover for,\u201d she says. She does Pilates every day. \u2028<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m in a pink bunny suit,\u201d she says. \u201cI gotta keep that shit tight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=&#8221;https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/St.-Vincent-11-26-17-193_RT-scaled.jpg&#8221; title_text=&#8221;St. Vincent 11-26-17 193_RT&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;image-gallery-caption&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_font=&#8221;|300|||||||&#8221; text_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;-10px||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d never not do music. I have to\u2026\u201d: Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), Beyond Studios, Washington DC, 26 November, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;text-with-dropcap&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1 has-dropcap\">Clark is a fascinating character but it takes time to adjust to being in her ether. She\u2019s friendly and funny \u2013 her humour is often delivered like it\u2019s in a noughties indie film \u2013 but there are a series of quirks and traits to navigate before you feel totally at ease. There are the \u201cah-a\u201d\u2019s, the \u201cuh-uh\u201d\u2019s, the \u201caaahhhhhhhh\u201d\u2019s, the voice that can lower itself to a whisper.<\/p>\n<p>She is excruciatingly fine with long silences as she ponders to herself. You could go off and make a casserole in the time it takes her to answer some questions and she often screws up her face as she\u2019s thinking, like someone\u2019s in there tweaking her brain with a screwdriver. She doesn\u2019t have a Texas accent in the way British people imagine that everyone who\u2019s from there should speak, like they\u2019re chewing gravel. Instead, she often sounds oddly anglicised. She has a lovely, welcoming laugh, and can be steely, soft, erudite and filthy. Her favourite joke is \u201cwhat\u2019s the difference between jam and jelly? I can\u2019t jelly my dick down your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Clark has three modes, turning from one to the next depending on what\u2019s going on at the time. There\u2019s Monastic Mode, the hermit-like existence she went into to make Masseduction, which involved recording, transcendental meditation every morning, Pilates, lots of coffee, and not much else. Doing \u201cTM\u201d changed Clark\u2019s life, she says, and a lot of the best ideas for the album happened as she was meditating. \u201cIt\u2019s really creatively generative,\u201d she says. \u201cI was also able to deal with my life emotionally a bit better and keep my head on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s Athlete Mode, her current setting. \u201cIt\u2019s regimented and functional,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to you, I\u2019ll do a bunch of other shit, get my recording rig set up, exercise. Dur dur dur!\u201d she says, mapping it out with her hands. After Athlete Mode comes the most dangerous, and fun-sounding, mode. \u201cOnce you start to go a bit stir crazy and you get tired of athlete style, there\u2019s Mania Mode, where you\u2019re looking for \u201csome distraction\u2026 give me a party, give me something seedy, something I can do that\u2019s a rebellion. Those are the three modes: let\u2019s go bananas, let\u2019s be an athlete, or get thee to a nunnery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She isn\u2019t in a relationship at the moment, and isn\u2019t the sort of person who feels like she needs to be in one when she\u2019s not. \u201cSome people are like, \u2018Oh, I really want a partner,\u2019 but I don\u2019t,\u201d she says. The thing that irritates Clark the most is \u201cwhen people are in that line where indecisiveness meets ineffectiveness. It drives me crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Recently, there was someone in the tour crew who did not meet her high standards. \u201cI can\u2019t stand it when people\u2019s first instinct is to say, \u2018Nooo, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s possible,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cHe drove me crazy and I fired him.\u201d Pity the technician or engineer who talks down to her. \u201cSometimes you walk into a situation with new engineers and people will treat you as \u2028if you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about, like a pat on the head, \u2018Oh, poor thing, she doesn\u2019t know what she wants.\u2019 That, I cannot abide. I eviscerate people who do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You have been warned. Now, though, it\u2019s time for her afternoon Pilates and, despite the kind offer to join in, there\u2019s a bar round the corner that is more suited to our present mode.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pull-quote&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; hover_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221; sticky_enabled=&#8221;0&#8243;]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">\u201cThose are my three modes: let\u2019s go bananas, let\u2019s be an athlete, or get thee to a nunnery.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pullquote-name&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; header_3_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_3_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_3_font_size=&#8221;38px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">St Vincent<\/h3>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; module_class=&#8221;custom-divider&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;text-with-dropcap&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1 has-dropcap\">Later that evening, 10 guests wait in the foyer of the venue before the meet and greet. The Slow Disco cocktail \u2013 very strong, unfortunately moreish \u2013 is on the menu and fans can have a go on the St. Vincent signature series guitar, an \u201call-inclusive\u201d model she designed and made with guitar manufacturers Ernie Ball Music Man.<\/p>\n<p>The podium from the Masseduction tour announcement video is also here and a St. Vincent crew member with a Polaroid camera will take a picture while you adopt a pose behind it.<\/p>\n<p>The doors to the Egyptian Room open and the lucky punters make their way inside. Clark walks onstage in a see-through rain mac and shades, offering a nonchalant \u201chi guys\u201d before playing two acoustic tracks. Afterwards, she sits on the edge of the stage and asks how everyone\u2019s doing. She talks about the Indianapolis scene with a couple who\u2019ve just bought a new washing machine, discusses the ins and outs of a student\u2019s computer engineering course with him and really peps up when the conversation turns to what guitars people own. Noticing that the two people standing next to me haven\u2019t said anything yet, she enquires, \u201cWhat\u2019s going down with you guys?\u201d There\u2019s no answer, and she\u2019s wearing sunglasses, so no one is really sure who she\u2019s looking at. For reasons still unclear, I choose to respond. \u201cWhat, me?\u201d I say. She shakes her head abruptly. \u2028\u201cNo, not you\u2026 I know what\u2019s going on with you,\u201d she says drolly. The whole sorry episode prompts the bloke next to me to explain to her what guitar he plays.<\/p>\n<p>She says goodbye to everyone and heads backstage, stopping off to say a quick hello to some local radio people, and at 7.30pm she starts doing her make-up for the show. She has her regular tequila shot at 8pm, finishes her make-up and puts on her bunny outfit. She did used to have a vocal warm-up routine but hated it, so now she just plays songs to herself. Tonight\u2019s choice to get her in the mood is a track by veteran Texan rockers Toadies, which she continues to play and sing until right before she appears from behind a curtain to go into Marry Me, an orchestral reworking of the title track from her debut album.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a fantastic show, like a futuristic punk-rock musical. With the set split into two sections, the first featuring reworked old songs and the second with Masseduction played in full, it\u2019s got the feeling of a spectacular one-off rather than a regular gig. Clark is a ferocious performer, and a thrilling guitar player. She plays it like she\u2019s trying to put a leash round a lion and every attack of her instrument is met with huge whoops of appreciation from the audience. The gig is both a compelling piece of art and an exhilarating rock show. By the time the ecstatic crowd are filtering out to the foyer at the end, Clark is already out of the building. At 2am, her tourbus pulls up 185 miles north at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Chicago. She goes up to her room, rolls into bed, and falls asleep listening to a podcast about Charles Manson.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; module_class=&#8221;custom-divider&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pull-quote&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">\u201cWhen you walk around and you\u2019re like, \u2018Why am I so angry today? Oh, I haven\u2019t come in three days\u2019 or whatever. I have the same thing about music.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;pullquote-name&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_2_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_2_font_size=&#8221;46px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; header_3_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_3_text_color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; header_3_font_size=&#8221;38px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">St Vincent<\/h3>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=&#8221;https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/St.-Vincent-11-26-17-067_RT.jpg&#8221; title_text=&#8221;St. Vincent 11-26-17 067_RT&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#111111&#8243; module_class=&#8221;custom-divider&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;text-with-dropcap&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1 has-dropcap\">One of Annie Clark\u2019s biggest fears is the people she loves dying. She knows there\u2019s no way she can prepare for it. Her family is important to her. They\u2019re her best friends. She has four brothers and four sisters, and all are incredibly close. Her fondest childhood memory is driving with her mum and two older sisters from Oklahoma to Texas singing Chapel Of Love in a three-part harmony over and over. Her eldest sister Amy calls the shots. \u201cShe\u2019s the future matriarch,\u201d she says. \u201cShe still bosses me around. It\u2019s really cute. My little brother Jack and I laugh about it all the time.\u201d Jack is on tour with her, acting as her personal assistant. Clark doesn\u2019t really have time to speak to anyone on the phone when she\u2019s on tour, but she and her mum text each other a lot. \u201cWe speak about once a week,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m glad she\u2019s gotten into texting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s early evening on a cold winter\u2019s day in Chicago and Clark is stretched across a sofa in her hotel suite. There\u2019s a balcony with a view looking out over the city\u2019s Gold Coast neighbourhood but she hasn\u2019t had a chance to admire it yet. It\u2019s been a busy day of radio sessions and interviews. She finds it hilarious when I bring up her telling me off at the meet-and-greet the day before. \u201cHahaha! I\u2019m sorry,\u201d she says. \u201cI wasn\u2019t being shitty, I promise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Clark counts three places as home. There\u2019s New York (\u201cthe place where I have wild nights\u201d) and LA (\u201cI love that there\u2019s a million resources available\u201d), but nowhere has what she calls \u201cthe ease\u201d of Texas. She grew up in Dallas, moving there with her mother from Tulsa, Oklahoma, after her parents split when she was three. \u201cIt\u2019s slow-paced, and running errands with my mom, like going to [discount retailer] Target, is a joy,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Although Clark hasn\u2019t had to deal with close family members dying, she has had to cope with loss of a different kind. In 2010, her father was jailed for 12 years after being convicted of fraud. She talks to him about once a month. \u201cI\u2019m not amazing at answering the phone in general,\u201d she says, \u201cbut he talks to my other siblings more often. It\u2019s definitely a mourning. It\u2019s mourning a loss but in a specific kind of way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She thinks about her father\u2019s incarceration every single day. \u201cAnd those thoughts vary,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s so many facets to that pain, or that tragedy, if you will. Even under the best circumstances, prison is a horrible, unnatural place, and in America there are so many rungs lower you can go. America is in the deepest need for prison reform, and I would think that even independent of my dad.\u201d Recently, she was reading about a man who was wrongfully accused of murdering a prison guard and ended up in solitary confinement for 44 years. \u201cThe amount at which we disproportionately incarcerate people of colour in this country, poor people, increasingly women, and the fact that, like all things in America, it\u2019s also privatised and incentivised, it\u2019s deeply corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Annie Clark loves America. As a touring musician, she\u2019s been to every corner of it, criss-crossed over every state, travelled every highway. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful and it\u2019s massive and has so many different kinds of people and so much potential,\u201d she says. \u201cI love it so much, I love it in the way you love a parent who lets you down, it breaks my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our time is up, and Clark gets to her feet to give me a hug as I leave. The door shuts behind me, leaving her to get back to making plans. There are script notes to approve, concepts to design, songs to write, a feature film to finish and recording rigs to set up. Other people buy a house, or get married, or have kids, but those markers have never held any allure for Annie Clark. Art, music, creating: these are the things that map out her way forward. She\u2019s a dreamer and a visionary, and she gets shit done. She knows how to make things happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u2028That\u2019s how she gets through. .<\/p>\n<p><em>This article originally appeared in issue 398 of Q.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=&#8221;credit-names&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.20.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; theme_builder_area=&#8221;post_content&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Words: <\/strong>Niall Doherty <strong>Images: <\/strong><span>Colin Lane<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those are my three modes: let\u2019s go bananas, let\u2019s be an athlete, or get thee to a nunnery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}