St. Vincent: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Jan. 22, 2018 | Bob Boilen -- Whenever I imagined a St. Vincent Tiny Desk Concert, it was always going to be loud and electric. But I didn’t see this coming – the brilliant guitarist arrived at NPR with one steel string acoustic guitar and without a warm-up or soundcheck. Annie Clark stood at my desk, in front of a few hundred-plus NPR employees and close friends, and hit us hard with her un-amplified voice, unplugged guitar, her checkered wardrobe and most importantly, her songs. These three tunes, “New York,“ “Los Ageless“ (not Los Angeles), and “Slow Disco“ are all from her recent record MASSEDUCTION (not Masseducation). It’s not the guitar-heavy record we’re used to hearing from St. Vincent. In fact, album producer Jack Antonoff (of the bands Bleachers and Fun.) thought “New York“ was a better piano melody than a guitar tune, so Annie had Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) perform it. Stripped of texture and flash, the wordplay pops in these songs. The cross references between the first two bi-coastal songs