Hello Annie, how are you?

Oh, I’m quite happy today!

Because you’ve won the Guardian critics’ best album of 2014 award?

I did? Oh my God! I was wondering why we were talking today! Thank you! That’s so nice. Although, can you hang on a minute, because there’s a … wasp. In my room! What do I do? Kill it? I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to go into anaphylactic shock if I don’t.

You have my blessing to kill the wasp.

Really? OK, it’s me or him, hang on … [Various banging follows, including the words, “Shit, I’ve made him angry ...”] OK, so that would be the second time in my life that I’ve had to kill something.

When, dare I ask, was the other time?



It happened in my apartment. It was winter in New York, and I was on my bed and I had just had a shower and I was thinking “I can just go to bed now”. And then I had a stand off with this creature ... I didn’t know what it was because I didn’t have my glasses on. But I couldn’t sleep because I thought it would run all over me, so I waited until it made this daring run to my kitchen and then I threw my book of Dylan Thomas poetry in its direction and it was just … dead, instantly. It was a mouse. And just now I’ve killed a wasp with Going Clear, a book about L Ron Hubbard’s life!

These are very literary deaths! So, anyway, album of the year! Hooray! Did you feel that St Vincent would be so critically acclaimed as you were making it?

[Laughs.] I mean, no! It’s not that it felt bad, more that I don’t write from the point of getting critical success. That feels like a quick way to artistic death labyrinth. You have to approach the creative process with reverence and respect, but you also have to give yourself over to it and say: “The music will tell you what it wants to be, so try and get out of the way, try and be a midwife instead of a dictator.”

It’s probably the most accessible of your four albums – was that deliberate?

It was more that I wanted to try to write great songs. I think songs are still, artistically, at the top of the food chain. So it was that simple. This album was more relaxed as a writing effort. I wasn’t really white-knuckling it. It was kind of like … I don’t have children, but this is what I imagine having children would be like. I’m from a family with a lot of kids, and I was later down the line … by the third kid, or the seventh kid, you’re just like: “Yeah, stay out as late as you want! Do whatever!” You learn to just let them be what they want to be.

Are you becoming a better, um, parent now?

[Laughs.] I think so … it’s a slightly more up-tempo and primary-colour record than previous ones. My last album was about a lot of grief I was experiencing, a life tunnel that was blindsiding and heartbreaking, so I was a bit happier in this period of time and … goddammit … there’s another fucking wasp! What? WHAT?! Is there, like, a NEST in here? What are the odds of two wasps? I’m concerned there’s a nest behind the curtain. [There follows a discussion about whether it’s a wasp or a yellow jacket, including analysis of the colour of its abdomen, before she decides to spare this one’s life.] OK, sorry, where were we?

Having just said it was poppy, St Vincent is also a delightfully weird-sounding record. What was the furthest out you went to get a certain sound?

A lot of the sounds are just conventional instruments that are manipulated by my dear friend [producer] John Congleton to the point where they sound a little alien or perverse. There are certain sounds that are just like: “Ooh, that’s the creepy guy hanging out at the kids’ playground!” It makes me feel uncomfortable, but I like it. So, the furthest out I actually went was probably the solo on Rattlesnake, which I wanted to make really serpentine … but I was playing this unfamiliar guitar, a Fender Jazzmaster with no tone, just a volume knob, and I sliced my middle finger right open on it, because it’s something that has to be played on one finger to get that glide. So that presented another challenge – playing the part while bleeding on the guitar.

The Guardian review of St Vincent claimed that your style icon is Einstein …

Yeah, I’m quite an Einstein fan. I love that he only had one outfit because he needed to conserve brain space. He essentially had a uniform so that he didn’t have to think. When you can make those macro decisions automatically, you free up a lot of time for more important things.

Have you taken this on in your own life?

Yeah … I mean, I’m organised. I’m obsessed with the idea of building systems and how systems work. So I’m definitely the person who spends their time creating the system and then implements the system. That way, you’re not reinventing the wheel every single day.

You’ve often said about St Vincent that it’s a “party record you could play at a funeral”. I’ve got to be honest, there’s no funeral I’ve been to where that music would be appropriate.

[Laughs.] I think I was thinking about my own funeral! I think about my own funeral all the time. Not that I want to die. I think that life is really, really, really, really fun. But I was joking with Jenny Lewis that I want her to sing the theme song from the Golden Girls at my funeral – [sings “Thank you for being a friend”] – but, like, really ham it up by going right up to the casket. Although I actually want to be cremated. It’s such an arrogant thing to be, like: “Hey, I know that I’m dead, but I’m going to still need to take up a lot of space!” 6x3x4 or whatever … come on, just be done with it!

It’s almost a shame you won’t be there for it. So, beyond your album, what else has been good for you in 2014?

The general ethos of mine has been to just say yes. Say yes to experience. There’s been so many times in my career where I didn’t have certainty that I could pull something off. But, if an opportunity came in, this year I’d just say “Yes” and figure out how to do it later. It’s been a year of yes. You rise to the occasion. You figure it out. It’s not that hard. Just fucking do it!

I know you’re a Kate Bush fan – did you get to see any of the London shows?

Oh, I didn’t. I would have loved to have seen it. I had one day off in London where I could have gone and it was, like, the one day where she was not playing. But I’ve seen footage of her shows before she decided to stop doing them, and they were just incredible feats of musicality and theatre. I’m just glad she did it. It seems that would be a hard part of yourself to shy away from and repress for ever when you’re clearly so excellent at it.

Also this year you performed with Nirvana. Did you have to steel yourself against inevitable criticism from diehard fans?

The way that I steeled myself against criticism was like this: “Hey, dude on the internet ... Chris, Dave and Pat asked me to do this!” [Laughs.] If they want me to do this, I’m going to do this. I’ll do it for the legacy, for Kurt and for the fucking nine-year-old girl who heard Nevermind for the first time and thought: “I want to be a musician.”

How did you feel about U2 forcing their album on iTunes users?

I don’t really have an opinion on that, except to say that, in general, I don’t think we need to be doing more things to tell people that music has no value. It’s hard enough as an artist to monetise music. I was reading Taylor Swift’s response to Spotify recently, and I thought: “Great, thank God, I’m glad.” Obviously, she’s one of the most successful entertainers on the planet, but we don’t need to be propagating this idea that music is something you should be able to turn on the tap and have. The amount of hours and blood sweat and tears that goes into creating content is pretty innumerable. So, it makes me giggle a little bit when people get incensed about music they don’t like. They’ve had zero investment in it, except for maybe three minutes of their time. So, obviously, music still has this power.

Which is a good thing …

Exactly. It circles back to music being incredibly powerful. Music will never not be one of the most powerful forces for soft change, and hard change, on the planet. I have full faith in music.

OK, I’ll leave you to your wasps.

I’ve started to worry that maybe the one I killed was in love with the other one. And now I’ve left it alone. It’s like Romeo and Juliet now, in my mind. But it runs in my family to go into anaphylactic shock. So that’s my justification … for MURDER! St Vincent: murderer of the year!