‘I’m not interested in moral purity’: St Vincent interviewed

St Vincent — Annie Clark, a 38-year-old singer-guitarist of prodigious gifts — spends a lot of time confounding people. She confounds them with stage shows that are less gig than theatre, ostentatiously choreographed and fabulously provocative (though not in any crude sense). She confounds them with an image that morphs from album to album (for her sixth, Daddy’s Home, she has adopted the dissolute Cassavetes-heroine look). She confounds them by, in a puritan age, placing sex squarely within her work, though usually in a plausibly deniable way (the title Daddy’s Home refers to her father’s release in 2019 from prison after serving nine years for his part in a stock-manipulation scheme. She says of the title: ‘It’s pervy’). She confounds them by being private and elusive, by refusing to be pinned down on her sexuality, while also entering into relationships with celebrity A-listers Cara Delevingne and Kristen Stewart.

And she confounds with her music, too, which shifts shape from record to record.