St. Vincent @ First Unitarian Church, May 21

POSTED: Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 11:45 PM

Filed Under: Music

ilovestvincent.com

"I threw flowers in your face on my sister's wedding day."

St. Vincent's normally sized guitar practically hides her entire sinewy, tiny body. Or so it looks from the back of the First Unitarian Church, where she started Thursday night with Actor's first track, "The Strangers," a dreamy tune that veers into major chords and pop harmonies sometimes, and dark lullaby territory in others. Undoubtedly, it's the album's catchiest song.

I'm never quite sure why bands often don't save the best for last, or at least for middle, but St. Vincent (n'e Annie Clark) has a problem with scheduling the entire night. The band cranks out many of the well-known favorites first, before people are riled up enough to properly enjoy them, and then saves the more dancey songs for the end, at which point we're all stampeding over one another to get to the closest handheld fan.

But these are all minor, nitpicky issues. St. Vincent is perhaps the best performance I've seen all year ' Clark's throaty voice is gentle enough to put a Surge-drinking teen to sleep, her backing band is even more polished in person than it is on record, and their combined stage presence' is perfect: It's straight songs, no talking bullshit most of the time, until the end, when Clark makes funny, dry jokes. "He plays basketball," she says of one of her bandmates. "But only with people 12 and under." In this case, at least, the timing's perfect.

It's also more apparent in person how well the band can transition from one genre to the next. They're playing fantastical, violin-heavy music one second, and dark Led Zep-inspired stoner rock the next ' literally ' and it sounds absolutely flawless. In the midst of doing this, they linger and draw out their classical side more often than they do on their albums, to the point that it almost becomes the length of a jam at times. On Actor and Marry Me, you' definitely know this classical side ' it's an acquaintance, let's say ' but you don't know it well. On the other hand, its cohort ' a bunch of no-nonsense pop melodies ' is something any St. Vincent fan knows well.

After the show, my boyfriend, who had never listened to the band before, has an interesting critique. "It was great, but I think the band sells itself short sometimes," he says. "I wish they would develop their classical side more." Indeed. By making the show better than its albums, the band leaked out a somewhat obscured part of itself. And now I want more. But what I got still left me satisfied.

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