Review: St. Vincent at Austin City Limits

Annie Clark works hard. In her short time in Austin, she managed to play a Waterloo in-store, a sold-out show at the Mohawk, and followed it all up with an ACL performance. The trajectory of Clark and her project St. Vincent has been all momentum and wild aerials with no stuttering false starts. After a solid debut album entitled Marry Me, St. Vincent just upped the game with Actor, an even more wily and powerful album than its predecessor.

Clark took the stage and slowly segued into her debut album's title track. Her set was economical but varied - she touched on new material but also saved room for timeworn favorites like "Now, Now" and the chilling "My Lips Are Red." Clark's latest material takes on the themes of violence-meets-innocence that spawned Grimm's Fairy Tales and its later interpretations, and Clark's music soared as it became alternately creepy and lovely.

St. Vincent's ACL performance included Clark on guitar, joined by four fellows who took on percussion, bass, violin, trombone and more. This way, strings, horns, and traditional rock arrangements were all represented, but none overwhelmed the other. If anything, it was a ghostly reliance on loops and effects that sometimes felt like too much, but we should just get used to it - even Richard Buckner loves him some loops these days.

With four considerably more tame musicians in her arsenal, Clark's voice (rendered through a regular and distorted mic) and guitar work came into full focus. Her playing is evocative and angry, and, during her solo cover of "Dig a Pony" by the Beatles, it was thorny and bluesy. Her best performances came when prettiness overlapped with the unstable, as during her "H-E-L-P M-E" refrain in "Marrow" while the saxophone squawked behind her. After an unsurprising call for an encore, Clark and crew regrouped and - to some surprise - revisited two songs that they had already performed, "Marry Me" and "Black Rainbow."

The studios have unsurprisingly great sound, and everything about the performance felt special and unusual, from the cameras hovering over our heads to the uncluttered closeness of the venue. It was weird and wonderful, and very temporary. After so many years broadcasting at the KLRU studios in the Communications Building, ACL is moving. The fact of its impermanence would have made this ACL performance more nostalgic if it hadn't felt so unfamiliar in the first place, and when we were let out into the night it felt like some Rip Van Winkle weirdness. If only most dreams were so sweet.

St. Vincent: [website] [myspace]