St. Vincent (Annie Clark)

He was just an artist with a capital A. He took us so many places.

Well, I mean, so my name is Annie Clark, which, you know, it's a lovely name.

It's a just fine name.

But there's also there was already an Ann Clark, who's a great artist.

And so that name was sort of taken.

So I thought, OK, I need to I want to have a moniker because I felt like it would give me license and freedom to do things.

To be bigger than Annie Clark, I guess.

I think there is a tendency to look at people performing with theatricality and think of it as inauthentic.

But

I find that sometimes people who are selling you authenticity are lying to you, you know what I mean?

It's like art to me is a place where I get to take everything that's happening in my life at that moment, in my internal world, in the external world,

And play with it and make sense of it and go, there's chaos, but somehow if I sit in my studio for long enough, I can alchemize that chaos into something that makes sense to me.

And so whether it's putting persona on top of that or getting at truths through exploring identity, sure.

I will say on this record, All Born Screaming, I'm not playing with persona.

It's really a record about life and death and love.

That's it.

There weren't many girls who were playing instruments back in Dallas, Texas, in my little neighborhood in the 90s.

But my friends and I were all very, you know, culture vultures in that way, very into music.

I played bass in a metal cover band as a junior high student.

So that was like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pantera.