St. Vincent

Art-rock auteur who made the guitar sound alien and exciting again

Anne Erin Clark was born in Tulsa and raised largely in the Dallas area. Her uncle was the jazz guitarist Tuck Andress of Tuck & Patti, and as a teenager she worked on the road with the duo, getting an early look at a working musician's life. She studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston for a few years before leaving to pursue her own music. Those early experiences gave her both formal training and a practical sense of the road.

Her first professional steps came as a member of the large, robed Dallas collective The Polyphonic Spree and as part of Sufjan Stevens's touring band. Adopting the name St. Vincent, she released Marry Me in 2007, then Actor in 2009 and Strange Mercy in 2011. Those records paired sweet melodies with sudden eruptions of fuzzed, glitchy guitar, and critics quickly singled out her playing as something genuinely new. Her songs also drew attention for their sharp, oblique lyrics.

In 2012 she made Love This Giant with David Byrne, a brass-heavy collaboration followed by a joint tour. Her self-titled 2014 album won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and that year she sang Lithium with the surviving members of Nirvana at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Ernie Ball Music Man then built her an unusual signature guitar, designed with her body and playing in mind.

Masseduction in 2017 pushed toward glossy, confrontational pop, and its title track later won a Grammy for Best Rock Song. She produced Sleater-Kinney's The Center Won't Hold, co-wrote on Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer, and returned to seventies-inflected sounds on Daddy's Home in 2021, another Grammy winner. All Born Screaming, self-produced and released in 2024, brought her a further haul of Grammys. Across these projects she kept reinventing her image, sound and stage persona, while her guitar stayed at the center of the music.

The 10 greatest St. Vincent solos

1. 1
   Surgeon

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2011
2. 2
   Krokodil

   St. Vincent · solo by St. Vincent · 2012
3. 3
   Cruel

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2011
4. 4
   Rattlesnake

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2014
5. 5
   Birth in Reverse

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2014
6. 6
   Broken Man

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2024
7. 7
   Marrow

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2009
8. 8
   Masseduction

   St. Vincent · solo by St. Vincent · 2017
9. 9
   Northern Lights

   St. Vincent · solo by Annie Clark · 2011
10. 10
    Your Lips Are Red

    St. Vincent · solo by St. Vincent · 2007

The sound

St. Vincent treats the guitar as a sound-design instrument as much as a melodic one. Her solos often erupt out of delicate verses in bursts of heavily fuzzed, gated or pitch-shifted noise that can sound more like a broken synthesizer than a rock guitar. Underneath the chaos is a highly trained player: angular riffs, odd intervals, precise hybrid picking and a jazz-informed ear for harmony. She favors short, jagged phrases over long runs, and her tone choices, from sputtering fuzz to glassy cleans, are as carefully composed as the notes themselves.

• Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent signature (guitar) Her distinctive angular signature model, introduced in the mid-2010s and used as her main guitar since.
• Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent Goldie (guitar) A later variant of her signature design with a different pickup voicing.
• Harmony Bobkat (guitar) A vintage budget electric associated with her earlier years.
• Z.Vex Fuzz Factory (effect) A key ingredient in the sputtering, unstable fuzz textures of her solos.
• Pitch-shifting and synth-style pedals (effect) Used to push her leads into synthetic, alien territory on stage and record.

Covers

• Lithium, originally by Nirvana Singing and playing with the surviving Nirvana members, she brought a nervy intensity to the song.
• Kerosene, originally by Big Black A favorite live cover that let her lean into abrasive, post-punk noise.
• Burning Down the House, originally by Talking Heads Performed with David Byrne himself, reimagined for their horn-driven band.
• This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), originally by Talking Heads A tender moment in the joint tour, alongside the song's writer.
• She Is Beyond Good and Evil, originally by The Pop Group Her take honored the funk-punk jaggedness that clearly shaped her own playing.

Timeline

• 1982 Born Anne Erin Clark in Tulsa, Oklahoma
• 2006 Plays with The Polyphonic Spree and in Sufjan Stevens's touring band
• 2007 Releases debut album Marry Me as St. Vincent
• 2011 Releases Strange Mercy to wide acclaim
• 2012 Releases Love This Giant with David Byrne
• 2014 Self-titled album; sings with Nirvana at their Hall of Fame induction
• 2017 Releases Masseduction
• 2019 Produces Sleater-Kinney's The Center Won't Hold
• 2021 Releases Daddy's Home
• 2024 Releases self-produced All Born Screaming

Facts

1. Her uncle is jazz guitarist Tuck Andress of the duo Tuck & Patti.
2. She attended Berklee College of Music but left before graduating.
3. Her stage name nods to St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, referenced in a Nick Cave song.
4. She was a member of The Polyphonic Spree before her solo career.
5. Her self-titled 2014 album won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.
6. Her Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar was designed partly around a female player's body shape.
7. She produced Sleater-Kinney's 2019 album The Center Won't Hold.
8. She is a credited co-writer on Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer.
9. She directed a segment of the 2017 horror anthology film XX.
10. She starred in The Nowhere Inn, a 2020 mock-documentary made with Carrie Brownstein.