The New Cue #363 March 4: St. Vincent
Good morning!
Welcome to your weekly free edition of The New Cue. Today we’ve got a chat with our old buddy St. Vincent, our star interview in the very first TNC back in February 2021. Since then we’ve delivered 362 further editions whilst St. Vincent has only managed to make one more album. Workshy or what! Niall gets into it with her below.
Enjoy the edition, and remember to share it if you like it, that would be nice
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… St. Vincent
St. Vincent, aka Texan dynamo and alt-rock-electronic-pop polymath Annie Clark, announced details of her forthcoming seventh record All Born Screaming last week. The first single is this modern age rock banger Broken Man, featuring Dave Grohl on drums and a scintillating riff you could chop down trees with:
Last week, Niall (that’s me, hello) went and met Clark in a plush suite at her London hotel to talk about the making of the new record, working with Dave Grohl, what she learned from David Byrne as well as having a minor disagreement over how long St. Vincent has been going. Brilliantly for him (me), Niall won the argument.
Hello Annie. How are you?
I’m good.
How much chatting have you done about the record so far?
A fair amount, but I’m not crispy yet.
Do the answers change the more you talk about it or do you find yourself discovering new things about it the more you chat?
I think I might still be finding it, I definitely have found myself uttering the exact same phrases on a couple of occasions.
What are they so I know to keep an eye out?
[does an impression of herself as a sort of 70s Manhattan worn-down artiste] “This is what the inside of my head sounds like…”
Haha!
It’s true but also corny. But true. I’m not yet in the groove where it’s so muscle memory that I’m autopilot.
That’s good. How were describing the album to your friends when you were making it?
I’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s heavy… and I’m in hell writing this’. If I had friends checking in, I’d be like, ‘It’s good but I’m in hell… this is hard’. But hey, life’s hard.
Are they all hard?
This one was harder. It was harder because I feel like I bit off a bit more than normal.
Is that you continually trying to prove to yourself just how much you can do and take on?
Yes…
When did you first realise you were the sort of person who needed to have lots of plates spinning?
I don’t know. I think the flipside of having not enough going on is depression so I’d rather be here and everything happening all at once than sinking into despair, which is being too sedentary.
When was the last time you had nothing in your diary and you were like ‘I’m just gonna chill for a bit’.
I did my first adult vacation in 2019, I went to Berlin. The first thing we did was go to the Stasi Museum. It was right before lockdown. I got really into the Stasi, I’m sort of dressed like a member of the Stasi today!
Yeah, are they missing a long leather coat?
Exactly! They’re missing a spy. Are you like that?
In terms of being busy? I’m either stressed I’ve got too much on or stressed there’s nothing happening, there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.
I totally get it. I never met him but I had a grandfather - the nerves definitely come from my dad’s side of the family - and for my grandfather, the cure for a nervous breakdown was to go and dig a hole in the yard. Like, ‘OK, every day you go and dig a hole in the yard!’.
I guess it was a period before gym membership or going for a run.
Yeah, I don’t think they had an Equinox back then. But I get it. That sounds quite soothing, in fact.
What did you learn about yourself making the new record?
I think I learned I might have some neuro-divergence and attention span.
You only learned that on this record?!
Yeah! Why, did you know that about me?
Well, no, but you’ve always been mega obsessive in the way that you make records. I’ve never met the person you are when you’re making a record, only the person before and after, but you sound like a nightmare.
Yeah… shit. I only just realised. You know what, let’s not go down that path, let’s not fucking go there! My process in working alone, nothing about it is linear, I’m doing everything all at once so I think that’s why it takes a little while.
Are you a different person when you’re making a record then?
Yes, because I’m searching and pensive and anxious and sometimes very cocksure and sometimes very insecure and it’s a whole emotional rollercoaster making a record.
What was your favourite moment making this one?
I have a couple of favourite moments. One would be having Dave Grohl come over to my studio. The second he kicks in on the first chorus of Flea, it’s just mind-blowing, my whole musical life flashes before my eyes and lightning up my spine, he just set me on fire. It’s so exciting to hear him play and he’s playing on one of my songs, what?! So that would be one. The other would be hanging with Cate Le Bon, who worked on the record. We did a pass on [title track] All Born Screaming in the room together with the microphone and me and Cate singing and it only happened once but we did a perfect ‘oh, oh’ harmony, it happens in the song, it’s the mark between the first half of the song and the second section. Nothing was planned or written, it just happened and it was perfectly balanced.
When did you realise All Born Screaming was going to be the title of the record?
The record was almost done and I was having drinks with Cate, throwing out ‘it should be this, it should be that, what about this…’ and it was like, ‘All Born Screaming, of course’. It’s great because you can throw it away, like, ‘Oh, you stubbed your toe? We’re all born screaming, we’ll all in this together,’ that I liked about it. And then if the baby is born screaming that’s fucking great it means it’s alive, what a miracle. And also we’re all born in protest in some way. Screaming is what it is to be alive. I thought it was universal and also quite violent.
What’s your earliest memory?
I don’t know if it was a memory or a dream but I remember being in Tulsa, Oklahoma and waking up before everyone and walking over to the neighbours’ house to play with something. They were elderly neighbours and I just let myself in the gate, walked in and played with some toy that I really liked that they had. Haha! I hope I had an open invitation… ‘Oh yeah, there’s the neighbour girl playing with our thing…’.
Where was your head at lyrically when you were writing for this album?
That loss is very clarifying. You go, ‘This matters and this doesn’t fucking matter, we’re all we’ve got, people we love is all we have’. Music has always been the thing that saved me, it’s always been the thing that sometimes would pull me out, I’d be holding onto music by my fingernails and it would pull me out of self-destruction. It’s always been that.
It's two years off 20 since you began making music as St. Vincent…
Well, I’m 26 so I don’t think your math is right.
Well, that’s why people call you a virtuoso… because you were 6 when you started.
Yeah! And it’s not two years off 20 years, my first record came out in 2007!
But there was an EP in 2006…
Oh God, there was.
I do my research, you know.
Yeah, you’re working hard for it, fuck.
How have you changed since then?
I feel like that might be a question for my friends and family. I have the same friends, my best friend since I was 16 is still my best friend, the same with all my home girls, my OGs. We’ve known each other forever. I think it’s important for me to be a decent person to my friends and family, it’s important for me to show up for them and be a person for the people I love. And that could’ve gone a different way.
In what sense?
I mean, I never had enough success to become a full-on cunt… it was gradual success! I only ever had to have a word with myself in terms of ‘slow your roll, cowboy’ on going hard and partying or something.
What’s been your hardest record to make?
This one. It doesn’t get easier. I don’t want to say there’s a correlation between ‘suffering’ and good art because that’s a tired construct but it doesn’t get easier because you know what you didn’t know before, you’re always learning, you’re finding your taste, you’re finding your ears and you also know what your heroes did so you go, ‘Well, where does this stack up against the things that I think are the absolute pinnacle of things?’ and you’re never gonna get there.
Have you had any advice from your heroes?
Not any specific advice that I can think of verbally, but watching David Byrne work, whether it’s conceptualise a show or how his mind works or hearing the freedom with which he approaches music, to me that was so pivotal, so inspired.
Have you ever had a job interview?
Kinda sorta. I worked at a flower shop and I went for a job interview.
A flower shop?
Yeah, it was a flower shop that seemed like it only hired girls so I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got one thing’. I must have had a job interview for that.
OK, that doesn’t sound it was a proper job interview so we’re going to do one now. I haven’t worked out what the role is yet but we can sort that later. Let’s start: what makes you unique?
Oh my god. Am I supposed to give job interview answers?
It depends if you want to get the job or not.
What makes me unique, oh God. Mmm. [Annie proceeds to tell an off-the-record story].
Well you’re not going to get it with off-the-record anecdotes.
What’s the next question?
What motivates you?
Making great work. I just want to make things that I think – no-one else has to agree – are great.
How do you handle stress?
I make big lists. I’m best when there’s so much going on that I have to very carefully keep all the balls in the air. Doing lots of things is so much better for me than doing a few things because each creative thing gives energy to the other.
What are you goals for the future?
Spend more time with my momma, be a decent person.
Can you give me an example of an occasion where you overcame a difficult work situation?
Yeah, just communicate. Communicate and know what people need and also know what you need and talk to people and figure it out, be adults.
What are your salary expectations?
In music, in 2024?! Haha, oh god.
Good point. Do you have any questions for me?
What kind of boss are you? What’s your managerial style?
My motto is We’ll Work It Out, cos it always gets sorted.
It’s true. That is a very good ethos. And I’ll come on back to the record here, it gets done. Somehow records get done, you never abandon them, somehow they get done so even in the midst of the despair that always happens when you’re onto something worthwhile, from a bird’s eye view, you’ll always find it if you keep looking.
ND