St. Vincent

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At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow our first wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why. On her new album, St. Vincent Live in London, she's backed by the 60-piece Jewels Buckley Orchestra on stage at London's Royal Albert Hall.

It was recorded last September. Let's listen to a track from it. This is Los Angels. That's St.

Vincent. On her new album Live in London, Terry Gross spoke to St. Vincent in 2024 upon the release of her album that was titled All Born Screaming. Two musicians featured on that album played in bands that influenced her in her formative years, Nirvana and David Bowie.

Dave Grohl, who was Nirvana's drummer and later co-founded Foo Fighters, is featured on drums. Mark Juliana, who played on Bowie's album Blackstar, also is featured on drums on some tracks. Here's a song from St. Vincent's album All Born Screaming.

It's called Broken Man. St. Vincent, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show.

This is a terrific album. The song that we just heard, those lines, what are you looking at? Who the hell do you think I am? So were you looking at someone or was someone looking at you?

You know, I think that there are these kind of frequencies that we can tune into in our brain that are like, you know, whether it's deep ego stuff that underneath that is really just a whole lot of pain. And you're walking down the street and you feel like you could fall in love with somebody or kick over the trash cans. And if someone looks at you the wrong way, you just could explode. I just I have that feeling.

I mean, not every day. Like I said, it's a frequency you can kind of tune into when life takes you there. But art luckily is a safe place to explore all emotions, all ideas, no matter how dark or complicated. And you're not saying, haven't you ever seen a broken woman?

You're saying, haven't you ever seen a broken man? Yeah. Why did I say it like that? Was it because of the number of syllables you needed?

You know, sometimes it really is as well, that's just things better. It sings better. And it makes me feel a certain kind of way. And so therefore, that's what it should be.

The chorus of a song, after what are you looking at? I think this on the second chorus, there's this really buzzy, dirty chord. And I'm not even sure if it's your guitar or you playing synthesizer or what is that? Oh, Terry, that's a combination of my guitar completely blown out.

And then also just white noise going, I love that because that is that is the about to unravel explode feeling that you're conveying through the song. I just think that chord gets it perfectly. And I love that it's used as punctuation. It's like the exclamation point in the song.

And it does it's not happening throughout. So it's so effective because you use it so sparingly. Thank you. Yeah.

I look at music sort of like architecture, you know, and call and response and tension and release. That's the whole game, right? And music is tension and release. So you get these little just explosions of release, and then it goes back to tension.

And then an explosion of release and then tension. But it's this simmering, creeping, creeping dread, I guess. I look on this record, I swear, I some moments are almost like horror movie jump scares. Like I think that chord is like a jump scare.

Yeah. So I mentioned that, you know, Dave Grohl, who was in Nirvana before co-founding Foo Fighters is on drums and that you played at the Rec and Roll Hall of Fame, that you sang at the Rec and Roll Hall of Fame induction of Nirvana. What did Nirvana mean to you in your formative years? How old were you when you first heard them?

I was nine years old. I was in my best friend, Doug's front yard. He and his brother, Paul, had built a half pipe. We were learning how to skateboard.

And Paul, who always had cool taste in music, you know, who was like onto DC punk from an early age, was like brought out the boombox, put in Nirvana Nevermind, and played it for us for the first time. And we were floored. And it was the first music that I heard that I went, this is my music. This is the music of my generation.

I'm wondering if Kurt Cobain's suicide had a big impact on you. You referenced suicide in some of your songs. I think it's fair to say you've done, you know, you've dealt with anxiety judging from your songs, you've dealt with anxiety and panic. And I'm wondering if his suicide was a kind of frightening thing for you.

And also, a kind of wake up call that like really talented people could go that far could be in such a state of despair, which, you know, in their life. Well, I certainly dealt with a combo platter of depression and anxiety in my life. You know, I had my first panic attack when I was eight. So that was always part of my consciousness, you know, but I certainly remember the day he died.

And I remember me and all my friends getting together and writing Kurt lives on our faces. And I mean, we were children. I mean, I was 12. So moving on to another influence.

Sure. I want to ask you about David Bowie and the influence he had on you. And I'm wondering what meant to you when you first heard him or over time that he performed in persona, like you sometimes had, and that he, you know, we didn't use the word then, but he was genderqueer. And he was called androgynous in his time.

So as a performer, what influence did that have on you? Well, I think Bowie even went as went so far as to say that he was bisexual in the 70s, which I mean, shocking in his time. Right. Mic drop like that was dangerous.

Then, you know, now that's a feather in your cap. Then I was, you know, daggers were out for him. So yeah, I, you know, I'm queer. So I've always felt like gender and identity were a performance.

I've been aware of that since I was a young child and learning how to code switch growing up in Texas and everything. So it kind of makes sense for me to deal with all of that, to deal with persona, to deal with identity in my work. And as far as David Bowie, I mean, gosh, he was just an artist. He was just an artist with a capital A.

He took us so many places. In terms of persona and David Bowie and yourself as a performer, did, um, did or does performing in character in persona liberate you in a way. Is it easier to do certain songs if it's not you? I mean, even having the name St.

Vincent, which is clearly not your, your birth name, but even having like a stage name, is that like some people might think, oh, she's hiding behind that. But is there something actually liberating about it? Well, I mean, so my name is Annie Clark, which, you know, it's a lovely name. It's a just fine name.

But there's also, there's already an an clerk who's a great artist. And so that name was sort of taken. So I thought, okay, I need to, I want to have a moniker because I felt like it would give me license and freedom to do, to be bigger than Annie Clark, I guess. I think there is a tendency to look at, you know, people performing with theatricality and think of it as inauthentic.

But I find that, you know, sometimes people who are selling you authenticity are, you know, are lying to you, you know what I mean? It's like art to me is a place where I get to take everything that's happening in my life at that moment, in my internal world, in the external world, and play with it and make sense of it and go, there's chaos, but somehow if I sit in my studio for long enough, I can alchemize that chaos into something that makes sense to me. And so whether it's putting persona on top of that or getting at truth through exploring identity, sure, I will say on this record, all born screaming, I'm not playing with persona. It's really a record about like life and death and love.

That's it. That's all we got. So your style of guitar playing, I mean, you have many different styles, but you do some great, you know, dirty sounding guitar. There's like, and you played in a noise, in a noise band.

That kind of shredding guitar style has mostly been associated with guys, especially before the riot girl feminist punk movement. What kind of bands were you in as a teenager, and did you play with other girls or did you play with guys? There weren't many girls who were playing instruments back in Dallas, Texas, and in my little neighborhood in the 90s. But my friends and I were all very culture vultures in that way, very into music.

I played bass in a metal cover band as a junior high student. So that was like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pantera. That was that kind of music. And I've always really liked heavy music.

But a lot of my time being about 14 on was kind of spent in my room recording myself. First it was like task ham, four tracks and stuff like that. But then my uncle and aunt are a jazz duo called Tuck and Patty, who my uncle's one of the best guitar players in all of the world. He's the finger style master, but he's also an engineer.

And my stepdad was an engineer and saw that I was really into recording myself in music. And with the help of my uncle Tuck, and my stepdad facilitating it on the ground in Dallas, he helped build me a little early digital recording studio in my bedroom. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so it was PC based.

It was called Cakewalk Pro Audio. I'm not sure if it still exists, but I could close the door to my bedroom and record myself. I could sing along to Billy Holiday and I could try to learn how to arrange and try to write songs. And I had this mirror, which is recording, to kind of listen back and go, I know how my heroes sound.

And I don't sound anything like them yet. I better keep going. And that was really, really helpful, I think, for me in finding my voice, getting better, learning how to arrange, learning how to think about music. And I'm so grateful to my stepdad, rest in peace, for seeing that and supporting those dreams, even though he didn't know anything about music.

He called himself a cultural desert. But it was just not wholly inaccurate, right? He'd drive me to school and we'd listen to Rush Limbaugh and then my mom would drive me to school and we'd listen to you. So it was a very, very, very different kind of experience, right?

But I do, I credit him with really giving me the tools to learn how to be an artist and giving me the space to do it. I want to play another song of yours. And this goes back to an earlier album. And the song is called New York.

And it's among your best-known songs. And before we hear it, I want you to say a few words about writing it. Sure. It actually started as a text message to one of my best friends.

I actually just, you know, texted New York as in New York without you. And I thought, oh, wait a second. I could use that. That's a nice sentiment.

But let me just score a little way and use it in a song. And I think, you know, I lived in the East Village for 10 years in a rent control department. But, you know, when you're walking around the East Village, you're like, oh, man, that's where Arthur Russell used to hang. And oh, that's probably where Patty Smith and Robert Mabel Thorpe used to sit in Tomkins.

And you're surrounded by not just the ghosts of your heroes, but also sort of the ghosts of your former selves, right? Like, oh, that's the bodega where I fell in love. Like, oh, that's the bar where we broke up, whatever. You're just completely surrounded by memories on every single street corner.

So, yeah, that's New York. So on the unfriendly radio version, which we cannot play because of the expletive, the expletive is rhymes with sucker and begins with mother. So you're the only mother that's what I have in the city who can handle me. So let's hear New York.

That's New York by St. Vincent. We'll continue her 2020 interview with Terry Gross after a break. Later, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new debut novel that she calls Sly and morbidly funny.

And I'll review the return of the TV sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. I'm David B. and Cooley, and this is fresh air. I want to talk about your aunt and uncle who performed under the name Tuck and Patty.

A jazz duo, your uncle plays acoustic guitar. My uncle Tuck plays a 1947 and 1948 Gibson L5, which is an electric guitar, but it's kind of a hollow body jazz guitar. Okay. And your aunt sings.

And they're pretty con performers. They're kind of on the other end of where you are as a performer. You toured with them after, I think, after high school. I think you made sure they had what they needed in hotels.

They had a decent room. They had food. They had tuned guitars. So what was it like as a teenager being on the road with professional musicians who were also your aunt and uncle?

So did that kind of dispel any ideas of how touring is like a really glamorous thing? Oh, I would say, yes. Touring with Tuck and Patty, and I don't mean this in any sort of slight to them, but just the amount of work that it takes to travel, put on a show, tech, all the gear, make sure that you've eaten. I had stuff like a little head counter, so I would walk around and count heads in the room so that when the promoter would come back and say, oh, we sold this many tickets, I had a count to compare it to.

So I could find out if the promoter was trying to stiff them on any tickets, because I said, because I had, well, no, actually, my count says we had, you know, 350, and you're only trying to pay us for, you know, 297. That's not, you know, so all this stuff, like really learning the ropes of the road. And really, really caring about Sonics too. I want to, they really care about Sonics and taught me to care about Sonics, and they really impressed upon me.

Not everybody has to like it. That doesn't matter, but you have to be excellent. You have to be excellent. You have to be as good at your craft as possible.

Watching and participating in your aunt and uncles tours didn't make you think when you became a professional musician and got to go on the road. Didn't make you think, I don't want to do that, like I've been there. It's just like really hard. No, no, I was, I was hooked.

I was hooked. The first tour I ever did with them was, I was 15. I'd never been anywhere except maybe I think to to New Mexico on a vacation and maybe Cancun or something, they took me to Japan. Oh, wow.

And I saw the war. I mean, I was, music has given me my whole life. And I, and yeah, it was hard work, but it's worth it because every night you get to spend 90 minutes with people and go someplace completely out of this world. And I saw them move people's hearts and move, they move my heart, of course, but move people to tears every night and really give people a place to lay their burden down.

And it matters. And it's so beautiful. And so, yeah, of course, you're tired and you're jet lagged and you're whatever. But the second, for me, the second it's showtime, it's like, let's go.

So I want to play another song. And this is a song called Smoking Section. And this is an example of I think how, how really good your lyrics are. And it's, it's a song about, well, how would you describe it?

I would say that's a song about toying with the precipice. You know, I would say that's definitely, I was quite bereft writing that song. And it's about kind of just going right up to that edge and looking over and going, huh, what if? Yeah, and let me, let me quote a couple of lines to color listeners attention to.

Sometimes I sit in the smoking section hoping one rogue spark will land in my direction. And when you stop me out, I scream and I shout, let it happen, let it happen, let it happen. And later, you think sometimes I stand on the edge of my roof and I think I'll jump just to punish you. So let's hear the song.

And here it is. So that's the song Smoking Section from, I think, a 2017 album mass deduction. That is, and fun fact, that's my Aunt Patty singing. Oh, so she's singing with you on it.

Yes, it's my Aunt Patty singing on the Oh, okay. Yeah, you asked her to do it. I did. What were you going through when you wrote that?

I had been just burning that candle. I, let's see, you know, I started touring really hard at Strange Mercy, which was 2011. And then I went straight from that into making and touring love this giant with David Byrne, which was one of the most joyful experiences of my life. And then I, the day I got back from being done with the Byrne tour, I started writing myself titled record.

And then from there, I went on a tour that just lasted forever. And I had breakups and new relationships and breakups. And I was just out of my mind. I was so just burnt, you know, and I had lost kind of my center.

And I think when I said before that I'm so lucky, I've always had my family. The other thing I've had and the thing that's always truly saved my life is music. I always had a place to go or a goal. So making mass seduction for me was like, the train had finally ground to a halt.

I was looking at myself and going, what am I? What have I become? What, where have I been? Where have I even been?

And so I went totally sober, you know, I went sober in every since there were, you know, no, no sex, no drinking, nothing just went full none mode. And was like, this music is going to save me. That was my lifeline that saved me. I knew if I had a record to make, then I could, then I could keep going, you know, and I, but also I want, you know, quote, brinino and probably misquote, brinino here, but like, you know, music is a car that you can crash over and over again and walk away safely.

Like, it's a place for me to explore and figure out all that is chaotic and brutal in life, but put it and make some sense out of it musically and maybe lyrically. But musically, I think of it as being very influenced by Leonard Cohen. Oh, I love Leonard Cohen. I thought you would.

Speaking of poetry. Yeah. Yeah. And transcendent.

Oh, but also, but also really not. Like he has the sins and the transcendence work into his songs. Absolutely. But I think I think you don't get one without the other.

You know, I think that's like, the human condition is so is so many things. It's, I just don't think you just get the, the joy without kind of knowing how lucky you are to, to be, to be joyful, you know, it's just, it's life is funny like that. Well, St. Vincent, it's really been a pleasure to talk with you.

Thank you so much. And thank you for your music. Thank you so much, Terry. I'm a massive fan.

And this was a real pleasure. It's such an honor to hear you say that. And I have become a big fan of your music. Thank you.

St. Vincent spoke with Terry Gross in 2024. Her new album, St. Vincent Live in London recorded at the Royal Albert Hall has just been released.

Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews, I Am Agatha, which she describes as the deviously plotted debut novel by writer Nancy Foley. This is fresh air. A sly and morbidly funny debut novel called I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley has our book critic Maureen Corrigan thinking about the extreme some people will go to for love. Here's a review.

Agatha Smithson is that rare person who lacks the gene for self doubt, brash and brutally dismissive of anyone who disagrees with her. Agatha is the main character and unreliable narrator of Nancy Foley's deviously plotted debut novel called I Am Agatha. If you're one of those readers who prizes like ability above all else in your fictional characters, you may be inclined to give I Am Agatha a pass. But that would be a mistake.

This is a strange, fresh story about artistic ambition and personal autonomy willingly abridged for love. And all too unusually, the love affair here is between two women in their 60s. Agatha's character is inspired by the real life minimalist painter, Agnes Martin, known for her canvases covered in graphs and stripes. Martin lived for years in New Mexico near Georgia O'Keefe.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Martin was a solitary person, although she had significant relationships with women. Nancy Foley, who grew up in New Mexico, says that her novel was inspired by rumors of such a relationship between a friend of her grandmothers and Martin. I Am Agatha takes place mostly in the 1970s, with flashbacks to Agatha's rough youth in Canada and allusions to a hard time in New York, including a stint at Bellevue. New Mexico offers Agatha a new start and an austere landscape that jibes with her art and her own personality.

Here's Agatha in her typical brusque, pared-down manner of speaking, describing the view from the adobe house she built herself, high upon a mesa. My house looks west, out over a canyon, that although far from any ocean whatsoever, yet resembles one in scope and light. This ocean canyon heaves waves of shale and basalt, quartz and silt, cloud shadows flit across its rock floor like ghost boats. There is no other place on earth like mesa portales.

I have traveled to many places, so mine is not an uninformed opinion. The truth is that there is a hierarchy. Some places are objectively better, just as some people are objectively better than others. The objectively better person Agatha wants to bring to live with her on mesa portales is her longtime secret love, a woman named Alice, who's now declining into dementia.

But there are two obstacles to Agatha's caretaking plan. The first is Alice's adult son, Frank Jr., who plans to move his mother into a care facility in Taos. At one point, Agatha and Frank argue over this plan, and Frank Jr. drops some bombshell news.

I'm startled, Agatha tells us, but won't let him take my own breath away from me and puff himself up with it. It's hard not to root for a character who knows how to sling words around like that. The other obstacle seems more immovable. It's Alice's daughter, Lorna, who's buried in the backyard of Alice's house.

Years ago, Lorna was murdered by her abusive husband, and Alice likes to sit every day by her daughter's grave planted with violets and lilacs. I'm not giving much away when I point out that Agatha's practical, if grotesque, solution to this dilemma is revealed in the cover art of I Am Agatha. Metaphorically, that book jacket hits readers over the head with a shovel. This novel becomes even more deliciously weird as a pattern emerges.

That is, whenever Agatha talks with Frank Jr. or other characters about Alice's welfare, Alice is never present. She's always taking a walk or a nap or just unavailable, and it becomes impossible to ignore that Agatha is estranged from a lot of people. She makes brief enigmatic references to a falling out with Georgia O'Keefe and an academic colleague, and a parasitic graduate student who's writing her thesis on Agatha's art.

As a narrator, Agatha turns out to be no more forthcoming to us readers than she's been to any of these characters, former friends she now regards as antagonists. In its ingeniously duplicitous narrative structure, I Am Agatha is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's magnificent Ripley novels. Not that Agatha is an amoral con artist like Tom Ripley, but she will do anything to safeguard Alice, her fading love. We are all of us hunted animals from the moment we are born, says Agatha, contemplating old age and death.

None of us will outrun mortality, but watching brilliant and wily Agatha try is captivating. Maureen Corgan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed, I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley. Coming up, I'll review the brief return of Malcolm in the Middle.

This is fresh air. Today, Hulu drops all four new episodes of an old sitcom, and it's a delight. The new limited series is called Malcolm in the Middle, Life's Still Unfair. Linwood Boomer, who co-created the original Malcolm in the Middle sitcom way back in the year 2000, is back for the reunion.

So is almost all the original cast in a four episode plot that has Hal and Lois, the parents of this very dysfunctional family, struggling to mount a 40th wedding anniversary party. When the original Malcolm in the Middle premiered, Frankie Munez, who played Frankie, spoke directly to the TV audience about his anxieties growing up in this particular household. My name is Malcolm. You want to know what the best thing about childhood is?

At some point, it stops. The series sequel, with its Life's Still Unfair subtitle, a shout out to the original show's theme song, picks up right where the seven seasons sitcom ended, with Malcolm still confiding directly to the audience. Yeah, I look differently, but hey, everything about me is different. I'm happy.

I'm successful. I've learned to work productively with idiots. My life is fantastic now. You want to know how I did it?

All I had to do is stay completely away from my family. Thank goodness he doesn't maintain that level of separation, because Malcolm's parents, Hal and Lois, are the best thing about any iteration of Malcolm in the Middle. Lois is played with exasperated patients by the wonderful Jane Kazmeric, and Hal, her goofy manchild of a husband, is played by Brian Cranston. He played his cartoonish live-action Homer Simpson hilariously for years, then took a hard turn to play Walter White, the science teacher turned drug-dealing murderer in the drama series Breaking Bad.

But he never lost his sense of humor, or how to play Hal's character. When Breaking Bad ended, he and Kazmeric filmed a playful scene just for fun and for YouTube, that was a callback to the famous ending of the TV sitcom Newhart. Remember, at the very end of that series, Bob Newhart woke up in bed in his old bedroom, with his old TV wife, Emily, played by Suzanne Plachett from the Bob Newhart show. He tried to describe his entire Newhart series to her as a bad dream.

And after Breaking Bad ended, Brian Cranston waking up as Hal in bed next to his former TV wife, at a similar experience. In Malcolm in the Middle, Life Still Unfair, the comic chemistry remains, though times have changed. Lois still shaves Hal's body hair at the breakfast table, shearing him like a sheep, but now Hal's hair is white. And at the table, on this particular morning, is a member of the family who is new to us.

Kelly, a teenager who identifies in a way that Hal's struggles to understand, at least in how to address her. We're going to go shopping later to them want to come? Him can't come with me, us has homework. Hey, he's trying, don't mock him for it.

I'm not afraid of you. That's not good. I get good grades, I help around the house. I'm your only kid without a file at the police station, I'm untouchable.

Yeah, well, it wouldn't kill you to tell you if I loved him every once in a while. I love you. Well, like it sounds sarcastic. I love you.

I sound annoyed. Kind of do. September. I love you.

I love you. I love you. The middle one was nice. Thank you.

I've seen all four episodes of Life Still Unfair, and they're full of laughs and surprises in equal measure. All but one of the former child actors are back for this sequel. There's a new actor playing Dewey, and other characters are added, including Malcolm's high school-aged daughter, Leah, played by Keeley Karsten, who's as humorously anxious and observant in this show as Malcolm was in the original. And Munez, as the grown-up Malcolm, is terrific.

So is Kazmeric as Lois. And Karsten, as how, goes through so many broad comedy pitfalls and pratfalls that he's like a text-avory cartoon character. Put it this way, what he did is a Hollywood executive in HBO's The Studio. That's nothing compared to what happens to him here.

And in both cases, coincidentally, massive amounts of pharmaceuticals are involved. Ken Coppis, a director on the original Malcolm, directed all four episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Life Still Unfair. And the final result is a show that's ultimately about family and tolerance and love. But most of all, it's about evoking laughter, which it does constantly.

On Monday's show, Toni Morrison's books have been celebrated and banned, and her quotes are everywhere. But author and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell has spent 30 years within Morrison's prose and says, what if we've been missing the point of her work all along? Hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brieger.

Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hurtsfeld, and Deanna Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Balvinato, Lauren Frenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yefundi, Anna Baumann, and Nico Gonzalez-Wist. Our digital media producer is Molly C.

Enispa. For Terry Gross and Toni Moseley, I'm David Bingham.