Concert review: St. Vincent at the Granada in Dallas (June 18)

by Nico Martini of My Denton Music

Annie Clark made it home Thursday night. The former Dallasite, now Brooklyn-based, St. Vincent's performance at the Granada was moving at worst, and breath-taking at best. She delicately flowed between sweet singer-songwriter-esque poetry to hard thrashing pulsating beats, enough to make you think you'd accidentally wandered into a Sleater-Kinney show.

The most incredible part of the evening for me was the silence. It's a rarity that crowds at shows are silent enough to hear a pin drop, and it's a bigger rarity in Dallas. The pauses between notes, where often you could only hear the soft gasp of Clark's breath, made this show one of the most incredible presentations of artists to fan connectivity that I've seen in quite some time. The silence was absolutely palpable, and I don't use SAT words lightly.

Highlights:

Set begins with "Marry Me."

Clark's tale of meeting David Byrne who was "a ghost of a man" when he walked from his hotel room to a gas station where she was buying beef jerky and a grape slurpee and her inability to shake his hand because of said "gnarly food."

The sheer sonic force behind "Marrow" and the My Bloody Valentine-esque finale of it. Physically affecting sonic power being forced upon the audience in the most artistic of ways was the most intense feeling of the evening.

Hearing from a crew member that when the D Magazine photographer showed up, they had to be reminded (by THE BAND no less) that they were there to shoot St. Vincent.