Adam's Thoughts on St. Vincent/David Byrne at Orpheum Theater in SF Mon 10/16/12:
I really started checking out Annie Clark (who's known to most as St. Vincent) about 3 weeks ago after hearing her new album collaboration with David Byrne and kinda freaking out. As I was kicking back at a nice dinner party with my lady and good friends Yoshi and Mac I heard some music that was on at a very low volume in the background that caught my ear…A male and a female voice, both very strong, with lots of character, singing together, apart, quirky, intense, beautiful, tricky but also with simple sing along melodies…Oh, that's David Byrne…I haven't been an expert on his music or Talking Heads but his voice is easy to point out - but the first thing about this album that's really catching my ears is that there's a TON of super unique horn stuff happening - not a surprise to hear horns with Byrne actually. Ok, back to my conversation at the dinner party about the amazing stuffed figs Shaina made. A few minutes later, the next song grabs my ear from our fig conversation…Now it's just the female voice singing and it's even MORE up my weird musical alley of quirkiness and heavy grooves with of course, even MORE horns. "Ok, Yoshi, what the Hell is this we're listening to? Sounds like David Byrne but…" "Exactly, it's a collab album with Byrne and St. Vincent…" I stared at him blankly, as if I was supposed to know St. Vincent - The silly part is I actually have heard St. Vincent before but for some reason the one song didn't grab me at that moment and that was that. Now, this was some different music , or something - In any case as each song came on I kinda freaked out more and more and my music listening playlist for the following 3 weeks was cemented.
Even with the hangover I felt the next morning, thanks to all that red wine the night before, the first thing I did was sit down and grab all the St. Vincent albums I could find and put em in one playlist along with the Byrne/St. Vincent album. As I listened through them I went to her most recent album "Strange Mercy" (2011)…HOLY C#@P! How did I not latch onto this? Then to "Actor" from 2009 and then to her first record from 2007…Each one a masterpiece to my ears. That's basically all I've been listening to for the past 3 weeks except for "work related" music stuff. I really dig all three albums as well as the newest collab but I'd have to say my favorite is "Strange Mercy" - Her songwriting is the perfect balance of surprise and comfort; harsh and soft; electric and acoustic; Her voice takes on so many different shapes and her guitar playing…well, she's kinda unreal. She's one of the few people I've heard who gets that tone that Prince gets on stuff like "Cream" and "Get Off" while at the same time she will switch on a dime to technically beautiful finger style chords, or incredibly melodic or completely chaotic playing. In addition to all of this amazingness, she somehow avoids all the cliches that most people who are making it today in the music biz are forced to employ (insert your favorite most annoying tricks HERE). She's also an impressive multi-instrumentalist as you can see in the live footy of "I am an Ape"where she does some deep in the pocket rhythmic drumming and soloing on a Roland SPD drum pad. Sorry Erykah, Annie could woop your @ss in a beat battle any day! Anyway, her records have some of the most interesting uses of acoustic instruments mixing with all sorts of modern rock and electronic beats and sounds that I've come across in my music collecting. Her use of strings and horns throughout her albums are some of the most unusual, well done and most inspiring I've heard - On the level of what one of my favorite arranger-orchestrators Vince Mendoza has done with artists like Bjork.
The video for St. Vincent song "Cruel" from the album Strange Mercy"
The version of St. Vincent/Byrne performing "Cruel" with the live band
I found out that Byrne and St. Vincent were performing live in SF and shuddered when I saw the ticket prices…After thinking about it a lot and growing to like her music more and more as well as the new album, I decided to do it. I was so glad I did after seeing the 2 hour long night of non-stop musical mayhem that they put together.
For this show they went with a 10 piece band: Drums, Keyboards and an 8 piece Brass Ensemble. Basically, this is the sound of the new album. They used this instrumentation for almost every song of the show, which included about an hour's worth of solo material from both Byrne and St. Vincent interspersed throughout. I thought this was an interesting choice, to keep all those horns up there the whole time but what they put together was a concept SHOW - It gave a cohesiveness to the whole thing that otherwise would've been more disjointed as each artist came up and sang their own VERY different sounding solo material with varying instrumentation. I dug how Byrne sang backups on her stuff and vice-versa and the horn arrangements on all their solo stuff were on the same super high level of the stuff on the new album. it was really fresh what they did with the Talking Heads stuff and the St. Vincent songs they selected tended to be ones that were more horn heavy already, a no brainer that made me happy. Something that surprised me was than mid show St. Vencent and Byrne took time to introduce the entire band, with full names, impressive, considering I've been on stage hundreds of times where the bandleader can't pronounce the last names of one of the folks in the band that they've known for years! THEN...later on they took the time to announce each of the horn player's own projects and told the audience that all their albums were for sale at the merch table. Unprecedented.
St. Vincent & David Byrne "I am an Ape" Live - peep the drum pad solo
So I have to talk about the horns and get more nerdy here. I've played horns all my life and basically have built my entire livelihood on a fairly specialized brand of mixing horns and orchestration with different styles of modern musical hybrids. Their collaborative album "Love this Giant" is the epitome of this approach in many ways. The horns actually never take any improvisational solos and the interest is kept up by solid writing, beautiful tones, repetition and tons of hooky melodies and rhythms. The horns act almost as rhythm section instruments playing parts that are often more inspired by maybe something like a late 70s analog synth arpeggiator than a more typical Tower of Power Horn section style. The instrumentation of 2 trumpets, 2 bones, 2 reeds, French horn and Sousaphone can sound super huge and brassy, soft and symphonic, and can be split up into smaller units of 4 + 4, 2 + 2+ 2+ 2, etc… and they did that extensively and very effectively.
The most unexpected thing about the live show was the INSANE amount of choreography and blocking that ALL the musicians were involved in (except drums/keys). There was never a song where they weren't moving around the stage with their wireless mics.I can't really think of any show I've ever seen that did anything like this - it was more like "STOMP" than a typical rock show where the guitar player jumps up on the drum riser or whatever. I know very little about choreography but I can only imagine how much additional time putting this show together took with the 2 hours of non-stop choreography that had to be learned. Unreal. Plus did I mention that the horn parts were unlike anything I've ever heard anyone pull off live? Also, numerous musicians doubled, tripled or quadrupled instruments, The Bari player played bass clarinet, flute or clarinet (can't remember), bari and flugelhorn and sounded TIGHT on all of them. The orchestration ranged from classical chamber sounding stuff to super gritty crunchy ensemble work that could scare your neighbors from 2 blocks away. It was all pulled off with a lot of class, never felt strained and it made the audience smile non-stop because of the sheer uniqueness of the concept and the execution. It was actually super fresh to hear a horn section play so well together and play such great stuff that there didn't need to be long solos all over the place and in fact there were NO SOLOS and it was kinda awesome. Hmmmm. All my "Jazz" friends are going to hate me now…well, they already do I guess so no biggie!
"The Forest Awakes" from the show in SF. This is one of the more challenging tunes.
Like I said, I'm not a David Byrne "Head" , or a Talking Heads "Head" (haha) but I definitely respect the hell outta the guy and his music and have been meaning to pick up his book for the past few months after hearing so many great things about it. The unlikely collaboration between he and Annie Clark was something that was imperfect, unusual, I'd imagine difficult at times to put together…I really have a lot of respect for them for reaching so far outside the box of what the industry "Allows" …Both of them could've easily just put out a new "solo" record and done the typical tour to support the record with their own band, it would've been WAY easier to pull off, way easier to promote and BAM! onto the next record. I work with large groups of musicians a lot and I can attest to how much of a HUGE pain in the @ss it can be - Also, collaborations between established artists can also be SUPER tricky because of schedules, strong egos, record companies, managers and a whole host of other problems that I probably don't even know about yet. Props to Byrne and Clark for busting so much ass, raising the bar VERY high, and putting it all together in such a pro way.
Byrne and Clark sing their asses off on this tune and sound great together "TV"
As for me and what I'm going to listen to now…I'm beginning a St. Vincent youtube marathon, just checking out all the stuff that's up there. I can say that she's for sure my fave musician of 2012 - I can't think of another artist who's records I've listened to non stop for 3 weeks in the past many years. I'm super excited to see where her career goes. I'd really like to see her backed by this crazy Orchestral group of underground musicians in San Francisco someday…what they hell are those guys called?
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment and exchange links etc.
here's a few more great live vids from the tour
St. Vincent's "Cheerleader"
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