St. Vincent’s Seduction

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: “St. Vincent’s Seduction”

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Annie Clark (St. Vincent)
Date: October 13, 2017

---

Overview

This episode features a candid, wide-ranging conversation between host David Remnick and musician Annie Clark, known professionally as St. Vincent. The discussion centers on St. Vincent’s new album, “Masseduction,” delving into its creative process, emotional themes, and Clark’s evolving relationship with her art, guitar, and personal life. Alongside musical interludes and personal reflections, Clark discusses mental health, the transformative power of art, and her forays into filmmaking.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Concept and Creation of "Masseduction"

• Album as Thesis:
  Clark views the title track, “Masseduction,” as encapsulating the themes and characters of the whole record.
  • [02:44] Annie Clark: “It's more or less kind of like a thesis. It contains all the characters that you meet on the album.”
• Themes Explored:
  Clark describes the album as an exploration of power, both alluring and destructive.
  • [03:07] Annie Clark: “I would say it's an exploration of power and the rosy sides of power, you know, and also the really the grim sides … the kinds of things that can have a total hold over you, be it, you know, drugs or sex…”
• Personal Experience:
  The album was born out of a tumultuous, transformative three-year period in Clark’s life, marked by periods of “monastic aloneness” and intense self-discipline.
  • [04:46] Annie Clark: “I just needed everything but the most vital things for creativity to just go away.”

2. Mental Health and Coping through Creativity

• Anxiety and Depression:
  Clark openly discusses her history with anxiety and depression and turning to creativity as a coping mechanism.
  • [05:54] Annie Clark: “I’ve been a really anxious person since I was a kid... that’s helped me because I sought ways to cope with it creatively...”
• On the Song “Pills”:
  She addresses reliance on medication for mental health and the duality of embracing and rejecting pharmacological solutions.
  • [07:10] Annie Clark: “I was working so much that ... I was certainly relying on more pills than I should have been taking to deal with anxiety and depression. But I’m not anti...antidepressant by any means.”

3. Artistic Evolution: From Guitar Virtuoso to Sonic Experimenter

• Changing Sounds, Expanding Palettes:
  Clark reflects on her reputation as a guitar “shredder” and purposeful movement toward new sonic territories, favoring discomfort and disruption over traditional virtuosity.
  • [10:26] Annie Clark: “I want [the guitar] to be like a perverse tornado ... to be the one thing that comes in and disrupts the scene completely.”
• Roots & Learning:
  Despite formal training (Berklee School of Music) and an accomplished musical family, Clark credits much of her style to early influences and experimentation.
  • [11:19] Annie Clark: “I feel like I’ve been coasting on the things I learned when I kind of first started playing guitar when I was watching my uncle play.”

4. The Role and Power of Art

• Empathy Through Art:
  Clark shares that reading books like “Black Like Me” and hearing music like Nirvana’s “Nevermind” as a child deeply shaped her, underscoring her belief in the capacity of art to change hearts and minds.
  • [15:09] Annie Clark: “All of these things are empathy exercises. And at its best, that's what art is... Music, theater, film... change people's minds and make them more human...”
• Childhood Encounters:
  Discussing hearing “Nevermind” at age 8 or 9:
  • [16:22] Annie Clark: “...the kind of purge of that fear through Kurt Cobain and Nevermind ... said to me, you’re not alone... you have a tribe.”

5. Performing and Transcendence

• The Nature of Live Performance:
  Clark explains the balance between structure and spontaneity on tour, comparing herself to an actor tasked with both precision and emotional surrender.

  • [19:54] Annie Clark: “...you need to be able to say your lines, you need to remember them… it’s not about you and it's not about your experience...it's about the audience's experience.”
  • [21:08] Annie Clark: “Sometimes I'm so in it and I'm reliving every moment... and then sometimes I am totally disassociated.”

• On The Nirvana Tribute:
  Clark recalls singing for Nirvana at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, describing the experience as “transcendent” yet emotionally complicated.

  • [19:10] Annie Clark: (On what she felt on stage) “Something like transcendence. Something like it.”

6. Branching into Filmmaking

• Directorial Debut:
  Clark describes being drawn to directing by taking on a horror-comedy short, motivated by the desire to do things that scare her.
  • [21:48] Annie Clark: “My ethos in life is to do things that are scary. And, you know, luckily for me, most things are scary. So I do a lot of things.”
• “The Picture of Dorian Gray”:
  St. Vincent is working on a modern, gender-swapped adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, relishing collaboration with screenwriter David Burke.
  • [23:55] Annie Clark: “I was approached by Lionsgate about being involved in an adaptation of Dorian Gray, but this time with a female protagonist and set in ... modern times. And I said ... only if I can work with David Burke, who wrote Elle... I’m totally obsessed with Elle...”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[The album] contains all the characters that you meet on the album. It's...like a graduate thesis.”
  — Annie Clark [02:44]
• “Otherwise just depression would take its jaws and just swallow me completely.”
  — Annie Clark [05:33]
• “I'm not anti-antidepressant by any means... those things have really helped me at certain times.”
  — Annie Clark [07:10]
• “I want [the guitar] to be like a perverse tornado... I want it to be... uncomfortable.”
  — Annie Clark [10:26]
• “All of these things are empathy exercises. And at its best, that's what art is... that art, music, theater, film... make them more human and remind them of their humanity and thus the humanity of others.”
  — Annie Clark [15:09]
• “I felt like I just sort of pulled [the song New York] out of the ether more or less fully formed, and was like, thank you. Thanks for that.”
  — Annie Clark [13:47]
• “Performing night after night... you need to be able to say your lines... it’s about the audience’s experience.”
  — Annie Clark [19:54]
• “My ethos in life is to do things that are scary. And, you know, luckily for me, most things are scary. So I do a lot of things.”
  — Annie Clark [21:48]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:29 – 03:44: Discussion of the album “Masseduction,” its title, and overarching themes
• 04:10 – 06:29: Annie Clark on isolation, personal struggles, and mental health
• 07:06 – 08:17: The role of medication and the meaning behind the song “Pills”
• 09:25 – 11:43: Musical evolution, relationship to the guitar, and influence of her uncle
• 13:39 – 14:39: Creative process behind the song “New York”
• 15:09 – 17:17: The transformative and empathic power of art, childhood musical influences
• 18:13 – 19:54: Performing with Nirvana, transcendence on stage
• 21:35 – 23:54: Exploration of film projects, especially a modern adaptation of “Dorian Gray”

---

Episode Highlights

• Intimate exploration of St. Vincent’s anxieties, coping mechanisms, and the redemptive power of creativity.
• Insights into the deliberate craft and thesis-like intent behind the album “Masseduction.”
• Unique perspective on performance: balancing artfulness, the needs of the audience, and personal emotion.
• St. Vincent’s willingness to push into new creative territory—both musically and as a filmmaker—by embracing what scares her.

---

For fans and newcomers alike, this episode offers a revealing look at the mind of a boundary-pushing artist facing personal and creative crossroads, punctuated by insightful conversation and musical moments.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

Floor 38. These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties. There's this sort of country city divide, their own convenient ends and it's not.

[David Remnick]

Clear where it goes next.

[Narrator/Announcer]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Not long ago I spent the afternoon at a concert hall on the west side of Manhattan where Annie Clark was getting ready for a show. Clark performs under the name Saint Vincent and she started out in indie rock. She played with artists like Sufjan Stevens, but St. Vincent was an old school shredder, a terrific guitar player and a rock star. As a solo artist she's been compared to David Bowie and her music is heady and layered and not always easy, but it's catchy and somehow seductive.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

You traced the Andes with your index and bragging when and when who you gonna bed next o listen to.

[David Remnick]

St. Vincent's new album just out is called Mass Seduction. I asked her about the title track.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

This is Tokoyesuda, who plays in my live band. I wanted her to pretend like she was an alien describing how to seduce someone, but in Japanese.

[David Remnick]

Why Japanese?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Because a couple reasons. One a totally self serving one which is that I love Japan and I want to be big in Japan so that I can go there all the time. I mean, I'm not above strategy.

[David Remnick]

Why did you decide to make this track, the title track, in the Woods? How does it shape the whole of the. Of the album, the conception of the album within themes of the album?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

It's more or less kind of like a thesis. It's more or less it. It contains all the characters that you meet on the album. It's. I thought of it. I thought of it like a graduate thesis or something.

[David Remnick]

A graduate thesis?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

Well, how would you summarize it? What is the thesis? Because the album is just. Just coming out. How would you describe it?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I would say it's an exploration of power and the rosy sides of power, you know, and also the really the grim sides. I mean, the kinds of things that can have a total hold over you, be it, you know, drugs or sex. Or is it telling that those are the only two things I can think of? I know there's a third thing.

[David Remnick]

Sadness. I think he told Nick Baumgarten who wrote a profile of you in the Magazine, Yes. Sex, drugs and sadness.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Sex, drugs and sadness.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

So d.

[David Remnick]

Now, has it been that kind of period for you in the last few years? It's been three years since you've had an album come out.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

It was a wild three years. It was a. Yeah, it was a. A lot of life happened in those three years, for sure.

[David Remnick]

I also read in Nick's essay about you that you said that you've been living through while recording this album, which takes a lot longer than people would imagine, a life of kind of monastic aloneness, that your life was a Pilates class.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I love Pilates.

[David Remnick]

Maybe reading a book here and there. And then work. And then work.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah, I just. I hit a point where I just needed everything but the most vital things for creativity to just go away.

[David Remnick]

Were you in trouble? Did you feel off balance?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Well, certainly off balance, yeah. Certainly off balance. I just needed to do sort of a radical reorganizing of my life in order to. In order to fulfill this Sounds really like a Tolkien thing or something. But like in order to fulfill my destiny as a creator, I needed to just clear a path.

[David Remnick]

Otherwise what would happen?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

You know, Otherwise just depression would take its jaws and just swallow me completely.

[David Remnick]

That's where you were.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

That's what would happen. Yeah.

[David Remnick]

And that's a long standing problem. Or that was a problem of the moment.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I mean. Well, one. I mean, talking about anxiety and depression, it seems like. It doesn't seem like anything that's stigmatized to me anymore because all of my friends have dealt with it over their entire life. So I've been a really anxious person since I was a kid. And more or less I think that's helped me because I sought ways to cope with it creatively and felt, you know, safe in being able to make something.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

Pills to wake, pills to sleep Pills.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Pills, pills every day of the week.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

Pills to walk Pills to think Pills, pills, pills for the family. I spent a year suspended in air My mind on the gap My head on the stairs from he letter d Listening back again from guru to voodoo and voodoo to zen.

[David Remnick]

There's a song on the album where you, well, embrace and reject the pharmacological way of getting at it. Pills.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

Was that a struggle for you?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

You know what? I don't want to overstate it because truly as it pertains to drugs, I'm kind of a Pollyanna. I never really like. I still, like. I've only seen cocaine like three times in my life, which is so stupid. Like you. You would think that it would just be you Know, be lying on people's naked bodies at parties. But that's just like, not the vibe, so. So I don't want to overstate it, but I was in a period of my life where I was working so much that I. And I didn't know how to get a hold of my life in any meaningful sort of centering kind of way. And yeah, I was certainly relying on more pills than I should have been taking to deal with anxiety and depression. But I'm not anti depress. I'm not anti. Antidepressant by any means or anything. You know, those kind of things have really helped me at certain times.

[David Remnick]

Now I have to ask you a musical question. So I'm the kind of dork that watches. I'm making a big confession on national radio. Guitar instruction stuff on YouTube. And as you know, there's gazillions of them. If you want to learn how to play something, some Norwegian kid will teach you how to do it. And it's embarrassing, all that stuff that as a kid you didn't know how to do. Some kid teaches. I'm watching you with some guy whose name escapes me backstage at the Capitol Theatre in Portchester, and he's asking you all kinds of dorky questions about playing the guitar. And yet the guitar seems to be getting stripped away. Conventional instrumentation seems to be less and less a part of your music. Sometimes you'll have a straight piano, but more and more it's electronic. Tell me about that. That conversion from being one of the great guitar players and shredders to somebody that's changing her sound. And why.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I will say there. There are definitely guitar moments on this album. It's not without guitar, but it's a funny. It's a funny thing, the guitar. I've been playing it so long, I've been playing it for over 20 years, which is weird because I'm 25. So. No, I've been playing it for over 20 years, so it's so much a part of my person, you know? But there's a certain amount of guitar playing that is about pride, that isn't about the song. And on this.

[David Remnick]

You mean macho speed and all that kind of thing?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah, yeah. It just didn't. That's not the way that I want to. That's not the way that I want to hear guitar, and it's not the way that I want to present it in my.

[David Remnick]

How do you want to hear guitar? What do you mean?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I want it to be like a perverse tornado or like I want it to be a lot of times really uncomfortable. I want it to be the one thing that comes in and disrupts the scene completely.

[David Remnick]

Well, you make these sounds on the guitar like nobody else. In other words, on that video I was watching, you're showing this guy who knows a fair amount, you said, I'm playing a minor second, which creates a sound that feels like, you know, the floor is coming out under your feet. And then at one point, you say to him, and here's a Debussy voicing. And I thought his face was going to fall.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah, my uncle taught me that. Yeah, exactly.

[David Remnick]

How much is that stuff that you learned in music school? You went to Berklee School of Music? And how much is just screwing around at home.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Man? Do you ever feel like you have been coasting on the books you read in high school? Because that's the time when you are just the most absorbent in some ways, I feel like I've been coasting on the things I learned when I kind of first started playing guitar when I was watching my uncle play.

[David Remnick]

And your uncle, we should say, was a terrific guitar player.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Oh, yeah. Tuck Andress. He's one of the great. One of. One of the jazz. Jazz finger. Jazz finger style master. I mean, it's unbelievable. I forgot. Your question is, what happened?

[David Remnick]

In other words, what? The sounds that you want to make on guitar are to match your emotional life, not to impress anybody.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah, I think I'm not. Well, I'm not that interested in guitar being a means of poorly covered up pride.

[David Remnick]

You said something interesting about this song, New York, which we want to play.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

New York Isn't New York without you Love so far in a few blocks to be so low and if I call you from first I've been new we're the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me New love wasn't true love Back to you love.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

So.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

Much for a home run with some blue bloods. If I last str you the only in the city who can stand me I have lost a hero I have lost a friend but for you, darling, I do it all again.

[David Remnick]

You said that it's the first song where you thought this might be someone's favorite song. What do you mean by that?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Some songs are hard labor. And I mean every word, every note is just like deeply labored over until it finally gets to the right spot. And so these things take a long time sometimes. Sometimes, yeah, super hard. And then some songs feel like they're floating around in the ether and they could have gone to Your next door neighbor, but, like, you were the lucky recipient of them somehow. And New York was one of those songs, the melody and everything, it kind of came rather quickly. And it was one of those songs that I was. I felt like I just sort of pulled out of the ether more or less fully formed, and was like, thank you. Thanks for that.

[David Remnick]

In your own life, have you ever had records or books or any work of art that changed you in a. In an apparent way, politically, deeply?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

For example, black like me. I read that when I was 13.

[David Remnick]

Right. Which was a school. That was a book that was often assigned in school.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

This was not assigned in school.

[David Remnick]

Oh, you were on the outside. It was somebody who gets his skin darkened and tries to enter the experience of an African American man.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yes. And he does, and he's brutalized and that. Something like that. All of these things are empathy exercises. And at its best, that's what art is. And I really, really, really firmly believe, and I wouldn't be doing what I do if I didn't, that art, music, theater, film. I believe that those things change people's minds and make them more human and remind them of their humanity and thus the humanity of others.

[David Remnick]

So I was really, really young, really young and heard I want you, Bob Dylan, long before I knew what it was to want you. But it took the top of my head off somehow. I mean, I was really young, 7 years old or something like that. And you were a similar age and were listening to Nevermind, the Nirvana album, at home. What did it do to you that. That young? How does. How does art penetrate somebody 8, 9 years old?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I mean, children have. They might not have the lexicon to describe the emotions that they feel and the things they're intuiting, but they have all the same emotions just in this tiny body. And I had a lot of the anxiety emotion. I had a lot of fear. And so hearing the kind of purge of that fear through Kurt Cobain and Nevermind and was liberating. It said to me, you're not alone. It said to me, we're all in this. Like you have a tribe is what it said to me.

[David Remnick]

And you could hear that at 8 or 9, as you were feeling.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Oh, fucking lutely.

[David Remnick]

I'm sorry.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Sorry. Absolutely. You just. You, you, you go, okay, okay, I'm not alone in this.

[David Remnick]

It must have been an incredible experience for you to stand up, you as Kurt Cobain for Nirvana and sing in front of that band. And this was at the induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame in Brooklyn.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

I'm so happy. Cause today I found my friends they're in my head I'm so ugly that's okay. Cause so are you. We broke our meals Sunday morning It's every day for all I care and I'm not scared Light my candles in the days. Cause I found God. Yay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Remnick]

Can you describe that experience?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

You know, David, I kind of can't. I don't know. That's one that I don't know. I don't know where to put that experience. Because everyone wishes that Kurt was there doing that. And I wish that too. So I don't know where to put that experience. It feels very strange to be joyful about it.

[David Remnick]

What were you feeling up on stage when you were singing?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Something like Transcendence. Something like it.

[David Remnick]

How often does that happen on stage? You tour and you play night after night and set lists, or I assume they alter, but they're pretty much the same. You're playing a show, it's called show business. How often is it transcendent and how often does it feel like a night at work?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

There's something in the structure and building, a really solid structure and foundation architecture of a show that to me, feels safe. And what I mean by safe is that.

[David Remnick]

What is safe?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

What I mean by safe is that it means that I know that the show is always going to be at a certain level of quality because I've beta tested it, you know, extensively, and then so that I have this platform on top of that, just like baseline level of quality to experiment with exactly how emotional it can be. And the thing about it is that performing night after night, it's a little bit like being an actor in that you need to be able to say your lines, you need to remember them, you need to stand in your light, you need to be, you know, have all the blocking down. Because at that point, it's not about you and it's not about your experience. In a lot of ways, it's about the audience's experience. So sometimes. Sometimes I'm so in it and I'm reliving every moment of the heartbreak of the song and singing that. And then sometimes I am totally disassociated.

[David Remnick]

But I don't think you're outside your own body.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

It's hard to explain. It's, you know, it's not, unfortunately, that like, you know, ghost floating above the bed looking down. It's not that, but sometimes it is just this sort of. I went from this dot to that dot to that. And we did the show.

[David Remnick]

I've just heard that you're going to direct a film version of the Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's great novel. How did that come about? Why did you decide to do this? And it's not what I expected, but I know to expect the unexpected.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Well, a couple years ago I was asked to be a part of an all female horror anthology called the xx. And my ethos in life is to do things that are scary. And, you know, luckily for me, most things are scary. So I do a lot of things. So I did this horror short, even though I don't like horror movies. Mine was more of a black comedy. It starred Melanie Lynskey, who was amazing. And what was the plot? Oh, boy. I keep describing it as Weekend at Bernie's. Two meets. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's like. It's like, oh, it's so stupid. A mother wakes up on the day that she is throwing her child a seventh birthday and she finds her husband dead of an overdose of some kind. And we don't know if it's suicide or an overdose. And she decides that hell or high water, she's going to throw her daughter. She's going to give her daughter a good birthday no matter what. So she's sort of frazzled. Elizabeth Taylor, hairstyled woman. And she hides the body and eventually hides the body in a big bear suit and puts it at the front of the table as all the kids are, you know, coming in and they're about to blow out the candles at the cake. And he accidentally gets nudged by the nanny who's bringing in the cake. And then his face falls into the cake. And then the nanny takes the hood off and it reveals the dead dad. And then the kids scream and it's over.

[David Remnick]

Yep. Yeah. With the Oscar Wilde thing, you're gonna keep it pretty much on the Oscar Wilde plot or you're gonna take it into.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

It's okay. So that was the entire plot of the Birthday Party. See it now, it's on Netflix. And. But the Oscar Wilde thing.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

I was approached by Lionsgate about being involved in an adaptation of Dorian Gray, but this time with a female protagonist and set in more or less modern times. And I said, yes, I'm very interested in doing that, but only if I can work with David Burke, who wrote Elle, which is the French film Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Pear. Elle is the best thing I've ever seen. I'm totally obsessed with Elle. And so I contacted David. That was scary as Hell, it's hilarious to me to be discussed after Movie boy. Oh, my God.

[David Remnick]

Yeah. So we're at the Highline Studios, which is an events performance place. And you're. The evening that we're meeting. We're meeting during the afternoon. You're going to be singing for an event. What are you going to play?

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Well, I'm going to play all youl Need Is Love, the Beatles classic. I'm going to play New York and I'm going to. I basically picked the saddest songs in my repertoire, of which there are many, but I picked the absolute most bleak for this party tonight. Glamorously sad songs. Perfect.

[David Remnick]

Perfect. On another occasion, you're going to show me how to play I Dig a Pony.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

Yeah. If I can remember it.

[David Remnick]

That's an amazing. That's. You don't do covers that. That often.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

No, because I don't know how to play anyone else's songs.

[David Remnick]

I don't believe you.

[Annie Clark (St. Vincent)]

No, it's true.

[Poetry Reader or Musical Interlude Voice]

Yes, we.

[David Remnick]

Annie Clark, Also known as St. Vincent, her album Mass Seduction is just out. That's it for today's show. I'm David Remnick and next week we'll hear an interview with Chelsea Manning, the former intelligence analyst who served seven years in prison after sending a huge haul of military and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. I hope you'll join us for that. Until then, have a great week.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.