![\"Boston](\"\/wtbu\/files\/2018\/05\/fb_admat_sponsors-819x1024.jpg\")
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St. Vincent\u2019s Saturday night set at Boston Calling had the crowd hooked even when they weren\u2019t quite sure what was going on.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n The set focused on St. Vincent\u2019s latest two albums. She opened things up with \u201cSugarboy\u201d (orange guitar) from 2017\u2019s <\/span>MASSEDUCTION, <\/span><\/i>a mesmerizing rock n\u2019 roll performance full of ripping bass and \u201880s synth keys. Live, St. Vincent\u2019s voice is as pure, clear, and cutting as it is on her records. She nailed some whistle tones\u2014those are high, high, high notes\u2014in \u201cYoung Lovers\u201d (yellow guitar).<\/span><\/p>\n Before jumping into her song \u201cNew York,\u201d she took its tune and replaced New York with Boston: \u201cBoston isn\u2019t Boston without you, love,\u201d she crooned, before name-dropping the Middle East and Boylston Street, around where she once went to college at Berklee.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThank you Boston, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Cambridge and Waltham,\u201d she said later. \u201cI used to be one of you, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n St. Vincent and her bassist, Toko Yasuda, laughed as they played a stripped-down version of \u201cCruel\u201d (blue guitar) without the string section. The song was slow and syrupy and impressive in its precision. In \u201cPills\u201d (yellow guitar), St. Vincent plucked out a languid David Gilmour guitar solo. \u201c<\/span>Pills to wake, pills to sleep, pills pills pills every day of the week,<\/span><\/i>\u201d a recorded voice chanted as she shuffled back and forth in an android dance.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is the gay version of \u2018Slow Disco,\u2019\u201d she said, and tapped into a stream of Devo inspiration.<\/span><\/p>\n The set was more musical theater than concert, \u00e1 la fellow cyber-obsessed singer Janelle Mon\u00e1e. St. Vincent had videos playing on screens on either side of the stage to accompany almost every song. \u201cCheerleader\u201d (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.<\/span><\/p>\n Remember the earlier comment about not being sure what was going on?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHuey Newton\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n St. Vincent\u2019s set was exhilarating and strange, as she surely planned. And that\u2019s why it works. St. Vincent is the rare artist who knows exactly what she\u2019s doing and what she wants her art to be. That confidence and singularity of vision can make any audience cheer for blue slime vomit.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n -Miranda Suarez<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n SET LIST<\/span><\/p>\n St. Vincent\u2019s Saturday night set at Boston Calling had the crowd hooked even when they weren\u2019t 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[30,408,26,31,413,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2106,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions\/2106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n