Prompt: Connect a musical moment with a larger cultural narrative

The stage was engulfed in a thick white fog, and aside from the anxious whispers of an expectant audience, the entire room was filled with a pulsating drone–slightly mechanical in sound–impossible not to fixate on. It’s March of 2015 and I’ve driven three and a half hours to stand in the newly re-named Upstate Concert Hall, about three people deep from the platform’s ledge (a spot I pushed and ducked my way into during the previous 30 minute art-pop set). Suddenly, the droning stops, and the silhouette of Annie Clark emerges from the mist. Her face is wreathed with untamed brown locks that reflect the wildness in her eyes. Clad in a black sheath dress emblazoned with a single sequined eye, Clark is flanked by the talented Toko Yasuda who acts as second guitarist, keyboardist, or back-up singer, depending on the musical demands. Toko also wears a dark shirt with sequining–however in her case the eye is swapped out for a set of red lips. The symbolism is fitting: the eye represents the imagination of the mystical visionary and the mouth stands for the organ through which those conceptions are transformed into sound.

Clark pounces on the abrupt silence left by the absent droning and, without warning, throws the band into the set. “Bring Me Your Loves” starts with St. Vincent simultaneously speak-singing the command of the track’s title and stretching out her arm, palm opened wide, with the uninhibited confidence of a three-year old demanding–rather than asking–for more, before returning her hands to the guitar and shredding the riffs of a woman who has not known earth as long as she has known the cosmos. Like all of her music, “Bring Me Your Loves” flirts with an otherworldly knowingness, and the song is a near perfect example of explosive chaos and calculated restraint–a raw display of musical talent made even more striking because of the masterful way in which St. Vincent commanded the stage in this live performance.

 St. Vincent, a name that both acts as the alter-ego of Annie Clark and the name of the group that she performs in, has finally crossed into mainstream–even if it has grudgingly done so. The eponymously titled album released in 2014 saw a Grammy win in 2015 for “Best Alternative Album,” and peaked just shy of a top ten spot on the Billboard charts. Clark is not only significant because of her incredibly virtuosic melody writing, guitar playing and musical arranging. She has consistently occupied a public social space that is decidedly feminine without being overtly sexualized. She is, of course, a woman, but she has freed herself–at least partly–from needlessly gendered behaviors in a way that feels notably sincere. Her recent launch of an Ernie Ball “Music Man” signature guitar–a guitar designed for women’s bodies that resists pandering by using either the color pink, animal-skin prints or heart symbols–is an excellent example. Instead, she lives outside the sphere of sexual stereotypes every time she takes to a stage dive and at those manic moments when she wildly pulls the strings off her guitar in the middle of a solo. Likely because of this, there is a subtle but powerful shift starting to emerge as opinion moves from “Annie Clark is an excellent female guitarist” to “Annie Clark is an excellent guitarist.”

Perhaps it is for these reasons the live performance of “Bring Me Your Loves” was so striking. Clark is a musician who stimulates the innocent request, “Please sir, I want some more,” that females have learned to suppress as they grow older. As the world continues to deny women basic liberties, the command to bend under the totality of the normative model is transformed over time to a dance of “maybe”s, “could I”s, and “if that’s OK with everyone”s. Clark dares to force her audience to engage with the music beyond a sonic level. With an extended palm, St. Vincent is aiding in the effort not only to carve a place out for female musicians in 2016, but also to give serious credibility yet again to the threadbare argument that women have the right to be taken seriously.