St. Vincent didn’t so much walk onto the Davies Symphony Hall stage Thursday night as materialize there.
Following a brief introduction from the San Francisco Symphony, a pulsating, almost tribal drumbeat began rumbling through the hall. Then Annie Clark appeared beneath crimson lights, looking like some slightly sinister marionette brought suddenly to life. She wore black tights, bright red shoes, a blue schoolgirl-style outfit and matching red lipstick. Even her movements seemed theatrical. She tiptoed across the stage like a ballerina, bent her body into mime-like poses that recalled Charlie Chaplin, then grabbed a guitar and shredded with startling force.
That collision between elegance and aggression was perfect for the room.
The opening run of “Hell Is Near,” “Reckless” and “Violent Times” established the night’s cinematic mood before Clark finally stopped to thank the audience for coming. With her full band playing alongside the orchestra, the songs expanded dramatically without losing their bite. Strings rose ominously behind her, percussion thundered and then everything could suddenly retreat, leaving Clark’s voice hanging in the air. At quieter moments, her cool, haunted delivery carried shades of Portishead. Elsewhere, the arrangements had the widescreen sweep of a great James Bond score.
Clark seemed completely at home in the middle of it. Throughout the night, different guitars appeared in her hands, black, white and red. One moment she would be tiptoeing delicately across the stage, the next she would explode into a massive solo. Prince and Hendrix came to mind, particularly in the way she made virtuosity feel physical rather than technical. Her guitar wasn’t simply part of the arrangement. It could suddenly rip through the orchestra and send the whole performance somewhere louder and more dangerous.
Midway through the concert, the temperature changed.
“Alright San Francisco, let’s go!” Clark shouted, and whatever formality remained inside Davies quickly disappeared. She gave the conductor a playful swat before launching into “Los Angeles,” then darted among the symphony players, teasing and interacting with them as laughter rippled through the hall. The musicians appeared to become part of Clark’s theatrical world, and the room rewarded the moment with its biggest round of applause.
It was exhilarating because the orchestra never seemed to restrain her. If anything, all those musicians gave Clark more possibilities to play with. The grandeur of Davies suited the drama already built into St. Vincent’s music, while Clark’s unpredictability kept the evening from ever feeling like a polite rock-meets-symphony experiment.
At one point she lit a cigarette before the next song, another bit of theater that fit naturally into the evening’s smoky, cinematic atmosphere. Later she introduced her band and called them incredible musicians and even better humans. She gave special recognition to her keyboardist, who she said had spent three years working on the project.
Then came “New York.”
The audience rose as Clark left the stage and walked into the crowd, engaging with people as she moved through the hall. After the enormous arrangements, guitar theatrics and playful chaos, one of her quietest songs became one of the evening’s most intimate moments.
“Paris Is Burning” closed the main set before Clark returned for “Slow Disco.” By then, St. Vincent had transformed Davies into something far removed from a traditional symphony concert. For one night, the hall became her own wonderfully strange theater, and she seemed capable of doing just about anything she wanted with it.
