Live Review: St Vincent

As the lights go down in Mac2 we're inexplicably greeted with a short film screening and we take a second to wonder if we're in the right venue. After this, the intermission music pulses relentlessly through the PA in a theatrical 'tension-building' exercise. But we wait a full hour before the diminutive Annie Clark aka St Vincent paces on stage in a puce leotard with matching pink stiletto boots, balancing gingerly as if she's walking a tightrope.

"I'm not anything at all", she repeats with opener Now, Now and given how long she's taken to appear on stage it almost feels like an apology. Regardless of the reason for the delay, her timbre is so startling and so pure that none of us seem to mind. Her body language is stiff and isn't matching up with the force and power of her vocals, making us wonder if she might actually be lip syncing. She proves any suspicions wrong with each of the next three songs, as the curtain is drawn to reveal a new microphone and higher level of vocal power so that she's arching across the stage in a graceful semicircle of degrees. She must also have a veritable rainbow of guitars back there because with each song she's also handed a new custom St Vincent (Ernie Ball) guitar in a wildly fluorescent colour.

With The Strangers she's still moving through something sinister but her vocals are as clear as glass and the sound in Mac2 is so pulsing, so resonant that it would be no surprise to look back and see Trent Reznor at the sound desk. Cheerleader sees Clark now fully alive and present in her body; "I've seen America with no clothes on" she yells as she shreds furiously into her guitar, her black bob splaying like nunchucks.

When the backdrop of a screaming female vampire face is revealed, she calls to the audience, "I know the whole world is on fire right now but we're down HERE and there's always something to dance about, right?!" before launching into a steely rendition of Digital Witness. With that she seems to let go of a certain psychic weight, turning a corner and taking her performance to another level. She's also exploring a number of concepts through the multimedia element in this performance; perceived success, toxic politics, female submission. Screens show us images of Clark herself appearing in vulnerable, abstract and outright absurdist scenarios.

After a costume change, she reappears and launches into Pills, which is by far the most moving, complex and satisfying of the songs in her set. "I can't even swim in these waves that I've made, from the bath to the drain, and the plane to the stage". What we are witnessing here is the slowly grinding mechanism of an artist working through her demons on stage. Her levels of focus and power only grow in scope with Masseduction, Los Ageless, and New York, all of which reveal more stimulating and complex visuals. With Smoking Section she delivers the devastating finale, crying "I let it happen, let it happen, let it happen" while a visual of her feeding the word "NO" through a paper shredder loops behind her on screen. Tonight's performance is fragile and triumphant and sees Clark proving her complexity, questioning everything and working through considerable discomfort to ultimately embody the type of power she's so desperate to see more of in the world.