St. Vincent. Photo: Chris Willman
Is St. Vincent our only real current female rock star? There’s a case to be made for her singularity, if we’re talking “rock star” not in the Post Malone sense, or even the Gaga/Pink/Madonna model of a pop goddess with rock attitude, but a star who actually plays rock and roll… and who’s leading it into the future, not reliving glory days. In these lean times for the genre, if there has to be just one, it’s a handy thing to have Annie Clark filling the position: She’s got enough style, ambition, chops, and complications for a half-dozen rock auteurs.
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You might hesitate to append “female” to St. Vincent’s status as a rock star — they’re rare enough in either gender nowadays — but there’s something thrilling about the way she plays with gender archetypes that makes the tag feel not so superfluous. There haven’t been many times in history when a rocker could first appear on the stage in what Clark refers to as her “bunny outfit” — puffy neckband and armbands, vinyl-looking bustier and leotard, thigh-high boots, all rabid pink — and not have to fear she wouldn’t be taken seriously. With her outfits, her slightly racy new album cover, and some stage videos that have her looking like a more demure model or housewife out of the ‘60s, you get the idea she’s using herself as a palette to playfully toy with our or her own ideas of what counts as feminine, feminist, or fierce.
Read Chris Willman’s entire article HERE.