St. Vincent
The prestigious Berklee College of Music is located in Boston. Its mission is to "educate, train, and develop students to excel in music as a career." What's tough is that many creative people tend to clash with any form of structure. "I think that with music school and art school, or school in any form, there has to be some system of grading and measurement," said Annie Erin Clark, otherwise known as St. Vincent. "The things they can teach you are quantifiable. While all that is good and has its place, at some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music." After three years at Berklee, Clark dropped out and returned to Texas where she joined The Polyphonic Spree. That was followed by a stint with Sufjan Stevens.
In '06, Clark began recording under her stage name St. Vincent, a reference to Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in 1953. "It's the place where poetry comes to die," she has rather cryptically said. "That's me."
St. Vincent's debut, "Marry Me" landed amidst critical acclaim. The '07 set earned comparisons with Kate Bush. At the '08 PLUG Independent Music Awards, St. Vincent won the Female Artist of the Year honor - she was nominated for two others (New Artist and Music Video).
The next year saw sophomore release "Actor" which peaked at #9 on Billboard's Independent Albums Chart, but only reached #90 on the Billboard 200. Still, the album did better commercially than its predecessor.
Clark was interviewed and featured on the cover of SPIN magazine in '11 just prior to the release of her third album, "Strange Mercy."
2007 Marry Me
2009 Actor
2011 Strange Mercy
If Laurie Anderson and Bjork had a daughter, she would be St. Vincent.