Living The Make Believe

St. Vincent has been moving at breakneck speed in the last couple of years, releasing and touring her third album, Strange Mercy, in 2011, before leaping immediately into a project called Love This Giant with none other than David Byrne. It seemed in this time, the world really started to catch on to what can only be described as the genius-like traits of Annie Clark. Her new self-titled record again has appeared very quickly and here she is sounding even more assured, more confident and more inspired than ever.

“It's a bit of blur for me, actually,” she confesses, “because basically the creative process is more mysterious to me now that it has ever been. I used to talk about it with this, like, false authority like I knew and I remembered how everything was created and I knew, you know, everything! I was out on tour for a year-and-a-half between Strange Mercy and then right into Love This Giant, but I hadn't had any time to properly sit down and write anything. But I had collected a whole bunch of ideas; you know, I would wake up in the middle of the night singing a melody and begrudgingly get up and put it into my iPhone so I wouldn't lose it. You live your life and you have stories and you have things you want to say, so I got back after Love This Giant – the first leg of that tour – and I thought I was going to take some time off and just readjust and, I don't know, whatever, do what people do. But I realised that the best way to simplify where I had been was to start writing and just write my way through it. It was a great way to do it because I didn't feel any pressure because I don't think anyone was expecting a record from me so soon. I just approached the record with a whole lot of confidence and abandon.”

Clark says that with St. Vincent, she “wanted to make a party record for a funeral” and there isn't a better way to sum it up overall – the album spills over with hooks and grooves but not by scarifying the substance, the mindful lyrics and outright intelligence.

“I was out there touring Love This Giant with David [Byrne] and people were really inspired to dance,” she explains. “The show was choreographed and there was just a lot of movement and freedom. I don't know how conscious it was but this time around I wanted to make something that people wanted to dance to that was very groove orientated, but I also wanted to make sure that it had heart and all that.

“I don't really spend a lot of time trying to fit in,” Clark continues. “I try to make music that I like and I believe and I think is interesting. I trust my intuition about what is interesting and I trust that I have ears and I'm a human being and if I like and if I believe in it, then it's going to resonate with people. How many people, that's always the question mark, but I don't sit back and worry about how many might relate. I trust this universal uniqueness of humanity. I'm very aware of this idea of how things are supposed to be, but sometimes how things actually are is absurd or bizarre. So the thing that I sometimes do artistically is – consciously or not – is take something that is recognisable and conventional and then just turn it about 30 degrees clockwise and then there's something in that form that I recognise but this is a slightly new take on it.”

And with a sly hint of a festival appearance later this year, Clark admits to being in a good place, somewhere she fancies as a truly unique way of living.

“We live in a world that, for a lot of people, the world of 'living your dream' is not on the table. People have tough lives and have nowhere near the access to opportunities or quality of life that we have access to. There are lots and lots of talented people with a similar work ethic who don't get to do what they love and make a living out of it. It's a very rare thing – I get to make believe all the time and make a living out of it. But also I can connect with people doing that – that's the best thing. All the other stuff, the traditional trappings of fame and the like, I am sure that's fine because, let's face it, who doesn't like a free drink once in a while, but that's very low on the list of things that really matter.”