St. Vincent employs ‘Masseduction’ to charm Indy fans

In a recent IndyStar interview, Annie Clark said she likes the term “my seduction” because it’s unclear if the speaker is the seducer or the seduced.

She tweaked “my seduction” when giving the title “Masseduction” to the new album by St. Vincent, her musical alter ego.

Clark performed the album in its entirety Wednesday at the Egyptian Room in Old National Centre, where the gifted vocalist-guitarist left no question about who called the shots as the evening's seductress.

A program of delicious contradictions — fame vs. isolation, artifice vs. authenticity — left St. Vincent’s audience thoroughly charmed.

The format of the show found Clark going it alone in the spotlight: simply St. Vincent and guitar accompanied by recorded backing tracks instead of a band.

This presentation suggested parallels to A-list EDM DJs who trigger prepared music amid eye-popping visuals.

All aspects of St. Vincent's "Fear the Future" tour are visually arresting, beginning with two wardrobe choices.

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For the show's first half, when Clark performed highlights of her pre-"Masseduction" discography, she wore a red outfit reminiscent of a Playboy Bunny suit minus the fluffy tail but adding faux-fur armbands perhaps borrowed from a Betty Draper dream sequence.

During the "Masseduction" segment, Clark wore a silver miniskirt accented by blue-green sleeves that interpreted hospital scrubs as skin-tight chic.

Other visuals hinted at David Lynch and Mark Frost's "Twin Peaks" as an influence, from drapes creating angles worthy of the Black Lodge's Red Room to a woman in a video wrapped in plastic and seemingly dead.

Lyrically, Clark played with the concept of being lonely at the top.

“Oh, what a bore to be so adored," she sang during a rendition of "Masseduction's" title track, accompanied by video of Clark spitting up pink liquid at a press conference.

She dedicated "Sugarboy" to anyone who's been an outsider, repeating the lines "I am a lot like you; I am alone like you" above a driving dance beat in the tradition of late-'70s Giorgio Moroder.

A guitar has been Clark's reliable companion for most of her life, and she continues to dazzle by making the instrument a surprising and flexible tool.

Wednesday's highlights included the cascading metal tones of "Fear the Future" and the jagged percussion on 2014's "Digital Witness." On "Masseduction" tune "Young Lover," Clark found the groove, or "roll," in an otherwise rigid rock structure.

The "Masseduction" album thrived as an A-to-Z performance, revealing no lulls and making Clark's earlier material every bit a warm-up to the main event.

The mainstream would be wise to warm up to ready-made hits "New York," "Pills" and "Los Ageless" — which stuns with its chorus revealed in increments: "How can anybody have you? How can anybody have you and lose you? How can anybody have you and lose you and not lose their minds, too?"

The heart of "Masseduction" beats, however, in songs that conclude that album's two sides. The aching beauty of "Happy Birthday, Johnny" and "Smoking Section" offered enough dancing with death and eventual hope to outshine Wednesday's visual feast.

Call IndyStar reporter David Lindquist at (317) 444-6404. Follow him on Twitter: @317Lindquist.