St. Vincent in The Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Sunday, 13th October 2024

Pants, jocks, undies, knickers, drawers, undercrackers; call them what you want, but they seem to have a line of continuity through tonight’s St. Vincent set.  A consistently fascinating live performer, the St. Vincent stage persona is almost impossible to pin down, and when Annie Clark dons a pair of said apparel to wear as a hat for much of Birth in Reverse in the middle of the set, it’s both at odds and completely in keeping with the playfulness of a performer who consistently keeps you guessing.

At various points of her career, Clark’s albums and tours have laid bare, elucidated and exaggerated various facets of personality, both hers and her collaborators’, be they choreographers, artists, musicians or, of course, that indelible David Byrne influence.  

Certain of her full-band live shows in years past have been meticulously staged with as much a focus on performance art and stagecraft as the music. The 2017 ‘MASSEDUCTION’ tour, while no less of a performance art piece, pared things back on the personnel front with Clark playing alone to a backing track in front of dazzling projection screens.  You have to wonder if that’s what she’s referencing on this visit when she wryly recalls a couple of previous shows in this venue (“The one you liked, not the other one”).

Tonight’s Olympia outing is first and foremost a rock show – a five-piece band, guitars to the fore, stage diving, shredding and synchronized choreography, bodies and guitar necks swivelling in unison. Clark falls to her back during Flea and plays on the floor before getting back to her feet in one fluid motion as if being raised like a marionette. She and Jason Falkner prowl around each other, the bodies of their guitars pressed into one another, up close and personal, channelling Bowie and Ronson. 

Glimpses of such studied choreographed moves are embedded in all the rock’n’roll glamour.  Almost every step onstage is executed with intent, and a warm smile from Clark can just as easily flicker into a manic grin as she glares into the middle distance. She offers one of her distinctive signature guitars into the front row of the crowd neck first when Cheerleader ends before appearing to storm offstage in a faux rage as Mark Guiliana hammers out a drum solo, almost immediately afterwards then diving in herself. Always keep ‘em guessing.

Pre-encore, Clark walks onstage alone holding two pairs of white jocks.  She uses one to mop some sweat and throws both pairs into the crowd, then rounds the evening off with Somebody Like Me, just her voice and piano, the ridiculous to the sublime. Before she departs into the wings with a final theatrical flourish, as elusive as ever, it’s with a statement that manages to be somehow alarmist and altruistic at the same time: “Take care of each other. It’s all we got. This is it; it’s all we got.“