Live music review: St Vincent

The crowd stumbled out of Cork Opera House on Monday night, blinking hard, trying to form words, trying to comprehend what we’d just seen. Over the course of about 90 minutes, St Vincent had taken us on a journey. We had our suspicions that she might be from another planet, a superior human being/guitarist/ artiste; this gig confirmed that Annie Clark is otherworldly.

Cork just gave me so much life. Thank you.

— St. Vincent (@st_vincent) July 13, 2015

It’s a familiar show for anybody who caught St Vincent on tour last year, but the confidence that oozes from the stage breeds exuberance; we’ve seen this show before and we want to see it again.

Her self-titled fourth album, released last year, dominates proceedings, with half the songs on the setlist. “Oh what an ordinary day,” Clark self-deprecates by way of introduction, the squalling ‘Birth In Reverse’ reaching every nook and cranny in the Opera House. ‘Rattlesnake’ and ‘Surgeon’ are greeted like old friends before Clark halts proceedings.

It’s already evident that this isn’t a typical rock show: Clark has been shredding the guitar while performing choreographed movements, arms contorting while babystepping forwards and back.

Now she’s telling us a story of hope that involves “the matriarch Sinéad O’Connor”, Seamus Heaney, stealing Lion bars from Topaz, and trying to fly with empty pizza boxes for wings.

There are no new songs, but St Vincent’s overflowing back-catalogue more than makes up for this slight disappointment. ‘Laughing With a Mouth of Blood’ and ‘Marrow’, from 2009 album Actor are highlights, and it’s impossible to resist the virtuosic ‘Chloe in the Afternoon’ and ‘Cruel’ off Strange Mercy.

Clark lies down on the steps at the back of the stage during one part of the show, while penultimate track ‘The Party’ finds her strewn on a makeshift bed, members of her band willing her on.

There was no sign of her girlfriend, Cara Delevingne, in Cork, but Clark’s stage moves do include some supermodel struts. We also see her solo like a guitar maestro, and her closing number, ‘Your Lips Are Red’, finds her on the shoulders of a security guard, high-fiving the front row, playing an inflatable guitar, and creating an aura of exultation. Not bad for a Monday night.