What is surprising, perhaps, is that in the same breath that she mentions Stravinsky as an influence on her music, Clark also mentions Disney scores of yore. Just don’t expect the birds to come down and chirp in circles around her head as she puts a new spin on catalog favorites like “Hell Is Near,” “Violent Times,” “Black Rainbow” and “Paris Is Burning.”
This current turn of events was born when Clark was invited to participate in the BBC Proms classical/pops crossover program, as captured on the new album, which was initially put out only on streaming and just had a vinyl edition come out in July. “Live in London!” would have been an essential enough addition to the catalog of one of rock’s modern greats, even without an in-the-flesh spinoff tour. But American fans are particularly lucky to hear her joined by a pickup orchestra in a short series of shows that will culminate in three California dates this week: On Thursday, she’ll appear in San Francisco at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony. Saturday, Clark will play San Diego’s Rady Shell at Jacobs Park with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. And finally, Sunday will bring her to L.A. for a show with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
Variety spoke with Clark by phone about why these shows represent a dream come true. Even though she’s rarely employed full orchestration in her studio recordings, the sound of a symphony has sometimes been implicit in her head, even if she didn’t actually go there till now.
When you did the orchestral show last year that is captured on “Live in London!,” were you planning on releasing it as a live album as as a one-off, and that might be the end of it, or were you always hoping you’d be able to get a full tour out of it?
Well, I wasn’t even thinking as far as a live album. I just knew that I was gonna do the BBC Proms with Jules (Buckley, the conductor and co-arranger) and Rachel (Eckroth, her keyboard player, also an arranger) and have a great time with it, and that’s all I knew. And then pretty much the second I got off stage, I had my manager there and Rachel, and I was like, “We have to do this again.” It was just the most euphoric feeling, playing this music with an orchestra. And then you go, “Let’s definitely do it again, but also, we have this moment captured in time. Let’s let people who were not there actually listen to it as well.”
In Los Angeles, we’re privileged to get a few Hollywood Bowl shows every year that have a pop star or rock band playing with an orchestra. And sometimes they’re incredibly well-integrated, but occasionally it feels like the performer didn’t want to change their arrangements that much to make room for a philharmonic.
Well, that is a waste of the philharmonic.
Where did the impulse come from originally for you to want to perform your music this way?
Originally it was this BBC Proms scenario. Jules Buckley and Rachel Ackroth are friends, and a few years ago, they were like, “Okay, well, let’s have St. Vincent do the BBC Proms” — that’s a series that they do with pop artists and symphonies — and it didn’t happen at first just for scheduling reasons. But then it made sense to do it last September, and that was a really fun process of song selection, going, “OK, what story do you wanna tell?”
So much of my early work, I would say, is really, really influenced by orchestral music. Especially, I would say, “Actor”…. well, the first three records, I would say. “Actor” is very influenced by Disney film scores and Stravinsky and Debussy. So it’s like, “OK, let’s dust off some songs that haven’t been played in a long time.” And also, I wrote them wishing there was an orchestra. But those early records are scrappy. I could only afford one French horn player, or whatever, but I always kind of envisioned them being these grand affairs. So we started out with song selection. Rachel and Jules began working on arrangements and would end them to me, and sometimes I would have a lot of notes, and then sometimes I would have basically no notes and go, “Go with God. This is heaven.” Then the rest is history.
It’s interesting to know that that connection or pull was there for you on the early records. Because not knowing so much about how this whole process came about, one could look at the setlist, which begins with you three songs from “All Born Screaming,” and imagine that there was something about the dramatic quality of “All Born Screaming” that made you envision this.
Yeah. I think the choice to start with the “All Born Screamies” is to kind of say, “OK, well, here’s where we left off.” And then, from there, “Here’s almost a retrospective.” It turns out I’ve made a lot of music over the past few years. And it was really gratifying for me to go back and see, like, oh, I used to write really weird (material). Because I don’t go back and listen to my own music. But to revisit and go, “Oh, wow, what was I thinking?” —not in a bad way, just in an “Ah, this is interesting” way. But it’s been nice. Heartening.
Can you give examples of songs that you wouldn’t normally do that suddenly seemed perfect for an orchestral show?
Oh, God, I mean, “Black Rainbow” from my second record starts with my Judy Garland fever dream. It starts with this floaty, almost big-band moment. It’s almost a “birth of the cool” sort of thing, and then it ends in, like, Stravinsky destruction. That’s a song that, with a rock band alone, I don’t think that we would do that one justice, because it has those ornate flourishes in it.
In starting the tour, you did a little video clip for Amazon where you talked about your three favorites to do in this show. One of them was “Smoking Section,” which is a real tour de force, starting with this bonus instrumental introduction. It has these big, dramatic punctuation points, while part of the time it’s just piano and drums with your voice. That one really takes a journey.
You get the full sampler platter in that one. I think Rachel and Jules just crushed it on that arrangement. I love that intro with the arpeggiated keyboard, and then you go on this whole journey before I even start singing. Then it gets to be as stark and lonely and also as grand and bittersweet as it possibly can be, all in the span of one song.
“Smoking Section” is a song where you’re singing about big-picture emotional issues in life, and it feels appropriate to have an orchestra going along with and bolstering you as you contemplate life in all its strange moments. That’s a very personal song, but it feels appropriate to have the grandness at the same time.
Definitely. I mean, it’s life and death and depression.
“Los Ageless” is another song that would typically appear in a non-orchestral set of yours, , but it’s a song you singled out as really feeling good in this setting.
Well, what I love is that the “Masseduction” recorded version of this song is kind of icy and almost like ZZ Top meets electro. Or ZZ Top meets Robyn, or something. What I love about Rachel’s arrangement of “Los Ageless” is that it strips all the iciness away, and really gets to the heart of the song, which is that it’s a torch song, and it’s a song about being brokenhearted and bereft. There are atonal jabs, and there are jazz flourishes, and there’s kind of a deeply romantic strain running through it as well. I love that it just goes straight to the heart of the song and transforms it from its original record version, almost more than anything else.
Do you generally think of these orchestral arrangements more as augmentation or reinvention?
I think it’s song-dependent. To me, a song like “Marrow” is augmentation. That’s my “Petrushka” dream come true, you know? I wrote that song so inspired by Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” [the Russian composer’s ballet score from the 1910s], but that’s how I always imagined it, but never had the money. And then other songs I think very much fall into the category of reinvention. When you sing them and the meaning of them changes to you, when the sentiment really changes, then I’d call that a reinvention.
Have there been shows you’ve seen in the past where there was a rock or pop performer playing with an orchestra, on record or live, that inspired you for doing something like this?
I think Beck has done beautiful shows with orchestras, and that makes so much sense because it’s really all already in the music, and you can just extrapolate. You know, “Sea Change” is masterfully arranged already, with strings, so there’s certain things that just make sense and, and are really exciting and beautiful. Then, I didn’t see this show, but I would put Portishead’s live album, “Live at Roseland,” as a great example of the two worlds coming together. To be honest, this as a genre is not something I’m super familiar with. Are there classic things that I’m missing? Like, “Oh, you never heard Madonna live with the New York Phil”?
When people hear these kind of arrangements, it’s a cliché, but they will say, “Oh, it makes it feel more cinematic,” or something. Do you feel that way at all?
I mean, certainly I think if you took my vocal out of any of these… I was listening to a whole lot of David Axelrod on my second record. I love Morricone. There were just actual film composers who are referenced initially in the work that it certainly would make sense that, when rearranged with the whole thing, it could feel cinematic, yeah.
Are you working on new stuff before or after this tour?
Nothing that I can talk about too frankly, but yeah, I’m working on a collaboration record that I’m really excited about. I got to have a little cameo in a Richard Foreman opera [“What to Wear,” which premiered at BAM in January], and that really inspired me and opened my eyes to that brilliant world of New York theater and the opera scene. There’s certainly things like that that I’m excited about. I worked with Mon Laferte recently, which is great [on “Tiempos Violentos,” a Spanish-languge version of the St. Vincent sog “Violent Times”]. I want to talk about other things, but… Yeah, I’m always working on a next thing.
How have you been feeling about how the tour has worked out, with most of the dates behind you now?
Oh, it’s great. I love this band; I love Jules; I love everyone. The shows themselves are beautiful, and also, they keep you on your toes because it’s a new orchestra every night. It’s not always even the same amount of players, so everything’s in flux and unique and special. And I’m just having the best time. I hope that this is just something that I get to do going forward whenever the time is right and maybe there’s a new batch of songs and arrangements. Maybe this could be evergreen, because it’s my Judy Garland dream. %!s()
