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Just before midnight on Saturday, Bostonist was surprised to see Annie Clark flanked by people with musical instruments. Marry Me, her first album as the pseudonymous St. Vincent, gave us the impression that she led a cheerful army of synthesizer-wielding robots, but there she was, in the non-synthetic flesh, with a bassist and a drummer and other humans. Her songs about augury and landmines retained that spooky, clear-eyed quality and, when she wasn't singing sweetly or shredding, Annie Clark stomped about like a frantic marionette (or somebody who learned to dance from John Linnell), but she didn't destroy our planet with lasers.
The audience repeatedly and loudly welcomed their non-robot master with cries of I love you and You're hot during every pause between songs, and some pauses during songs. The drama of not a few compositions was undermined by some loutish adoration (and one tangential shouting match about John McCain). Marry us all, they pleaded, and Annie, turn up your microphone, all in vain: no one was betrothed, she didn't play "Apocalypse Song," and despite two microphones of her own (one for processing her voice into antique-radio distortion) the vocals remained buried at sea.
On this last point Bostonist agreed: Clark's sweet-tart voice and many clever turns of phrase were frequently obscured by rhythm section, violin, bells, and a tinselled synthesizer. We were grateful, then, for some sparse moments in "Landmines", "Paris Is Burning"—sleep while I slip poison in your ear—and a solo rendition of the Beatles' "Dig A Pony".
And we were grateful for the evening's other revelation: Annie Clark is a heck of a guitarist. Those carefully-burnished studio recordings did not prepare us for the accomplished freakouts to which we were treated. On our headphones, "Your Lips Are Red" is clever and densely layered pop; live, it's a tightly-coordinated assault.
As their set progressed, St. Vincent's obligatory shoutouts to Boston gave way to warmer, more accurate shoutouts to Cambridge, followed by all-inclusive acknowledgments of Framingham, Roxbury, Somerville, Allston, and pretty much every other MBTA-accessible municipality. Local personage Amanda Palmer, who has covered "Marry Me", was on hand for some pale girl-on-girl action, backup-singing Marry me John boop boop boop while Clark handled piano and bells.
Basia Bulat and Foreign Born opened. The latter layered wailing vocals and wailing guitars to inarticulate but atmospheric effect; the former thoroughly charmed the part of the room that was paying attention, Bostonist included. Bulat began, bravely, by venturing onstage alone, slapping her shapely hip for accompaniment and startling us with her honeyed voice and considerable charisma. The rest of her rousing set heaped 36%-milkfat vocal harmonies on top of dulcimer, autoharp, and ukelele (among other pluckables). She'll be back in town soon. In April, with Devotchka—we already checked.
Pictured, from top: Annie Clark in bedazzled swing dress and fishnets (earlier on in the evening she was wearing the skinniest jeans ever, or possibly leggings that were decorated to look as if they were jeans); Annie Clark beating "Through the Fire and the Flames" on Expert; Amanda Palmer in super ornate coat; Basia Bulat persuading us to buy her CD, and an extra copy for our moms.
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