You can tell a lot about somebody from their couch. Annie Clark, who writes and performs as St Vincent, is no different. She did have a type of settee, but it was no ordinary one; it was something a friend had made for her, a “complete rip-off” of the artist Donald Judd’s day bed — a stylish and angular construction that you won’t find in the DFS sale. So far, so Clark; aesthete to the core. But it had its limitations.

“I loved looking at it. It was gorgeous,” Clark says wistfully. “But my friend isn’t a couch maker, he simply works with wood, and it was The. Most. Uncomfortable. Thing. Ever. So there’s not a proper cushion for it, and it’s hodgepodge, and you’re