I 'n' Gigs 6: Sufjan Stevens (London, 2006) or rather St Vincent (London, 2006)

I  was meant to be going to see Nick Cave and his merry bunch of Bad Seeds this week. Since I'm not, and gigs are something which I'm sure a lot of people are missing, I thought I'd write a little about 10 gigs I went to. Not my favourites per se, just memorable ones from down the years.

These are not reviews. I wouldn't do that very well. They're just memories. I have called the segment "I 'n' Gigs"  (a pointless pun on the name Ryan Giggs)... that is a good indicator of the quality writing to come ...

Support acts, you know … they don’t get their due. A great support act can really set up a gig. So can a terrible one, to be fair, as you’ll be begging for the main event.

Went to see Sufjan Stevens, still  Illinoise-making, in late 2006 at the Barbican. Out rolled quietly beforehand, “Hi, I’m Annie, I’ve started calling myself St Vincent, I play in Sufjan’s band and I’m going to play a few songs of my own before his show”.

Here’s a thing, it’s of more interest to me than anyone else, but since I’m here and this is how my mind works, St Vincent had named herself, shortly before that, after a line in Nick Cave’s ‘There She Goes My Beautiful World’ … “and Dylan Thomas died drunk in St Vincent’s Hospital” which happened on 9^th November 1953 which was my dad’s 14^th birthday, and anyway I love that it’s Dylan Thomas and Nick Cave that inspired St Vincent as the link’s not obvious what with her supposed persona being cool and futuristic, but actually there’s so much depth and sadness in some of her songs. 

And Dylan Thomas did the drinking that took him to St Vincent’s Hospital in the White Horse Tavern, where Brendan Behan used to drink, and Liam Clancy used to drink with Bob Dylan and they’d sing ‘The Parting Glass’ and also at the Barbican in 2005 I’d seen Liam Clancy and Odetta, two old friends and such huge parts of what influenced Dylan, reminiscing and duetting, and, anyway, I used to listen to Clancy records at my dad’s flat, and my mum had an Odetta record, so I love how all these pieces of trivia fit into a pot.

Another thing about Annie Clark when she was Annie Clark not St Vincent – she was in the Polyphonic Spree. They had a bit of hype in the early 2000s, then their album was pretty disappointing and it seemed like a bit of a silly stunt.

They were playing while the sun was still beating down on the first Thursday evening of my first Benicassim in 2005, and much to our surprise, they were brilliant. And, though I don’t remember it that well, I remember that it wasn’t just that they were funny and fitting and a bunch of people having fun in cloaks, but there was something actually brilliant and compelling there, and though I know it’s my visual imagination playing tricks, I can see Annie Clark in my version of that gig, singing and playing guitar in that bold, angular style, elevating the whole enterprise.

Well, anyway, at the Sufjan Stevens support slot (for what it’s worth, the actual Sufjan Stevens gig was also utterly superb), I remember she played ‘Paris is Burning’ and that was cool but the one that I loved was ‘Marry Me John’ and that line “let’s do what Mary and Joseph did (long pause) … without the kid” and I think I audibly gasped at the brilliance of it.

And as it happens, these “John” songs have been down the backbone of St Vincent’s work – there have been three of them, ‘Marry Me John’, ‘Prince Johnny’ and ‘Happy Birthday Johnny’ and the latter is just one of the saddest saddest songs you’ll ever hear …  ithe whole thing’s like the ‘Before’ trilogy of indie-rock platonic love.

When I think of the support acts I’ve caught – St Vincent, Feist, James Blunt, The Shins, Vampire Weekend, Florence and the Machine, Goldie Lookin’ Chain, The Magic Numbers, Father John Misty, that I can think of (though there may well be more) have gone on to be bigger, in a sense, than the act they were supporting.