BOSTON CALLING 2018: St. Vincent
St. Vincent’s Saturday night set at Boston Calling had the crowd hooked even when they weren’t quite sure what was going on.
The music was great, that much was clear. Everything else took some thinking. An example: the drummer and keyboard player wore pantyhose over their heads and matching tan jumpsuits, topped off with blonde bowl-cut wigs. St. Vincent herself came on in a traffic cone-orange one-piece, carrying a bright orange electric guitar to match. She switched her guitar out for a new color almost every song, handing off the discarded instruments to a pantyhose-head in a black wig.
The set focused on St. Vincent’s latest two albums. She opened things up with “Sugarboy” (orange guitar) from 2017’s MASSEDUCTION, a mesmerizing rock n’ roll performance full of ripping bass and ‘80s synth keys. Live, St. Vincent’s voice is as pure, clear, and cutting as it is on her records. She nailed some whistle tones—those are high, high, high notes—in “Young Lovers” (yellow guitar).
Before jumping into her song “New York,” she took its tune and replaced New York with Boston: “Boston isn’t Boston without you, love,” she crooned, before name-dropping the Middle East and Boylston Street, around where she once went to college at Berklee.
“Thank you Boston, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Cambridge and Waltham,” she said later. “I used to be one of you, too.”
St. Vincent and her bassist, Toko Yasuda, laughed as they played a stripped-down version of “Cruel” (blue guitar) without the string section. The song was slow and syrupy and impressive in its precision. In “Pills” (yellow guitar), St. Vincent plucked out a languid David Gilmour guitar solo. “Pills to wake, pills to sleep, pills pills pills every day of the week,” a recorded voice chanted as she shuffled back and forth in an android dance.
Not only is she among the greatest guitarists, but she has a powerful stage presence. She exudes confidence and warmth, as she demonstrated when she ended the show with one of her most joyful tunes.
“This is the gay version of ‘Slow Disco,’” she said, and tapped into a stream of Devo inspiration.
The set was more musical theater than concert, á la fellow cyber-obsessed singer Janelle Monáe. St. Vincent had videos playing on screens on either side of the stage to accompany almost every song. “Cheerleader” (blue guitar) featured a video showing St. Vincent holding a phone to her ear. A praying mantis crawled over her hand as she opened her mouth to vomit blue slime.
Remember the earlier comment about not being sure what was going on?
“Huey Newton” brought the action live. The black-haired pantyhose-head in charge of switching out guitars came onstage and loomed behind St. Vincent with her neon yellow guitar. He circled her like a vulture, leaving the audience in suspense as the band played an ominous version of the song’s buzzy intro. He made a full lap before slowly, slowly strapping the guitar over her shoulders, her arms frozen in a bent-elbow robot pose.
St. Vincent’s set was exhilarating and strange, as she surely planned. And that’s why it works. St. Vincent is the rare artist who knows exactly what she’s doing and what she wants her art to be. That confidence and singularity of vision can make any audience cheer for blue slime vomit.
-Miranda Suarez
SET LIST
- Sugarboy
- Los Ageless
- Pills
- New York
- Savior
- Masseduction
- Huey Newton
- Year of the Tiger
- Marrow
- Cruel
- Cheerleader
- Digital Witness
- Rattlesnake
- Fear the Future
- Young Lover
- Slow Disco