Who I want to watch myself when I watch porn like no, no, I do not?
Is this?
Who are the people who like this?
Welcome to Midnight Chats, a podcast of laid back conversations with leading names in music. In keeping with these informal interviews, each new one is published weekly at midnight. This week's episode is hosted by me Greg cochrane from Loud and Quiet magazine. Tonight we start a brand new series with
a brilliant guest, sent Vincent. Having started out playing in fans including the Polyphonic Spree, over the past fourteen years, Annie Clark has released a succession of incredible albums, from Marry Me in twenty seven right up to Mass Seduction back in twenty seventeen. In between, she's collaborated with some of the biggest names in music, from David Byrne to Sleeter Kinney, Dave Groll to Taylor Swift and just recently
some guy Paul McCartney. We get into that in the conversation you were about to hear right now, Saint Vincent is just about to release a new album, Daddy's Home, out on the fourteenth of May. I spoke to Annie back in early April, pretty much straight off the back of her performance on Saturday Night Live. Do check that out if you haven't already. We talk a bit about that, this past year of not playing live shows, the family circumstance that informed Daddy's home, and her love for, among
other things, New York Black Midi and tequila. So yeah, we've got a bunch of fantastic guests lined up for across the next ten weeks. We hope you enjoy listening to these chats as much as we have enjoyed recording them. It is great to be back and we start here again. This is Saint Vincent on Midnight Chats. Just before we get into the chat. This episode of Midnight Chats is supported by Memphis Industries and Independent record label who've supported what we do at Loud and Quiet from day one.
They've just released the eighth album from Sunderland band Field Music, who over the past sixteen years have become your favorite band's favorite band. I'm sure you're familiar with the group, led by brothers David and Peter Brewis. The new record has just come out and it's called Flat White Moon and is available from your local record store or you can order a copy from Field Dash Music dot co dot uk, where you can also find dates for their
upcoming tour, happening in October twenty twenty one. Annie, Welcome to Midnight Chats. I'm very, very excited to have you join me on the podcast. Pretty much fresh from playing Saturday Night Live at the weekend, which is the second time we've been on the show. How is the experience this time?
Let's see. I would say there's more fun that the first time I played it, I was just a total bundle of nerves. So I mean, yeah, this time it was just just a lot of fun.
Obviously, it's still a slightly different version to the sort of Saturday Night Live we're used to seeing, sort of pre pandemic. There was only there was like a small audience. Everybody was kind of obviously wearing their masks and sort of socially distanced and stuff like that. Did it lend us sort of slightly strange air to doing it? Or was it? Was it all still totally fine?
No, it was all still totally fine. I mean, it's really impressive how how the show has managed to keep going. I mean they're super strict, you know, rightful, so on COVID protocols for everything like that. So it really is a pretty miraculous feet that they're able to put on the show still and then also to even have the audience as any audience and there in the first place is really really cool.
It was still very much used to on like all of the big kind of talk shows and entertainment shows in the UK. Still they've got the kind of video screens where there's like an audience buzzing in from home. It still seems like the way of things at the moment here that yeah, hopefully soon there will be people to be able to get back in a room and enjoy live music. I particularly enjoyed your performance of Melting
of the Sun, by the way. I thought it was brilliant. Well, is that the sort of presentation of what we saw there with the live band that you had and your backing singers and everything like that. Is that how you're going to hopefully perform this album generally? Is that the sort of live setup you're hoping to put together?
Yeah?
I think so.
This, I mean, this music is really it sounds redundant or something, but it's really just about like musicians like just playing together, just like vibing. So yeah, I mean it takes it definitely takes like a certain kind of singer and a certain kind of player to really really pull it off. So yeah, this is the vibe.
Obviously, you've had the kind of enforced break like everybody else and not being able to perform on stage for however long it's been a year eighteen months. Was that the first time you've sort of stepped back on stage as it? Oh god, yeah, oh yeah.
Like everybody else, I've been in my you know, in cozy clothes, am I home or basically is more like it. But yeah, no, it was so fun. I mean, it was so fun to play that music. It's it's really music that's really meant to be played, you know, like really just kind of played with great players and just kind of leaned into like that. So it's so fun to just the music part. And then also, my god, the uh, the energy of any kind of crowd or or or that kind of like three two one and you're on.
I mean I haven't heard anything that even vaguely resembles that feeling, and well over a year, so it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot I used to do this.
What was that sort of rush of adrenaline, like in the in the moments before performing, it was excitement.
It was like, let's get down and dirty with it. That was really feeling and the you know, the band is so good that it there wasn't really, there wasn't any fear associated. It was just like excitement, like, let's give the people something they won't forget. They has given the people that some people will love and some people will hate.
Do you think there's there's still people that would find that what you do divisive? Do you think there would still be people watching Saturday Night Live and I'm not into this?
Oh yeah, of course, of course, of course. I mean it's a it's a it's a big, massive broad audience. You know, plenty of people that definitely haven't heard of me or so, yeah, it's definitely going to be a mix of like, loved it and what the fuck did I just see? And and I hate this?
But that's fine.
I think that's good. It means you made something alive, way better that than that.
Yeah, Oh yeah, I'm much better to provoke some kind of feeling than just forget about it. A minute later, staying on the subject of not being able to perform live. Is it through this sort of period of the pandemic, is it felt if you felt a bit incomplete, like not being able to do that, because obviously you've you've always been somebody who's toured a lot and kind of been out on the road and supported all of your
albums with tours. So has that felt like a little piece of you's sort of been missing for a little while, or have you actually embraced that chance to have a little break.
It's a bit of both. I mean, definitely, starting at the beginning, I spent my whole adult life adult and quotes on the road like a real road dog, as a real road dog for a long time, which I'm you know, I'm glad and that it made me good at being on the road. You know you definitely you don't get, you know, good at performing without being bad at it first. So that part I'm glad I sort
of have in my toolbox. I don't at first. I was really nervous about the shutdown, even when obviously in the beginning, when we thought it was going to be like, what, we're going to be shut down for a month? You've got to kidding me, what are we going to do we were, and it was like, I don't know, how do I be in one place for more than two
weeks at a time. But then, honestly, yeah, I guess part of it was very nice because I hadn't I hadn't stopped, I hadn't stopped being on the road for for a long time, or definitely this is the longest I've ever gone in well over a decade. You get to kind of store up, I think, store up some energy, maybe get a couple of years of your life back before you go and do it again. But yeah, there's not a feeling. There's not a feeling like being on
the road or performing in regular life. There's there's not an analog. There's not a rush or a purpose in quite the same way.
Well, yeah, I can't wait. I don't know what situation is like there in the States, But at the moment was still a few months away from being able to get together again for any kind of live music in the UK. But hopefully, hopefully it's not too far away. So are you in New York at the moment?
I'm in New York.
Yeah, Because the album Daddy Time is sort of indebted to a certain chapter in New York music history and kind of can you tell me a little bit more about that and how there was a certain period that's really really come to inform the film that the feel of this.
Record, it's music made in New York City from seventy one to seventy six, post Idealistic Flower Children, pre gay disco, and pre punk. So it's really like the Steely Dan Records, Stevie Wonder, Rudcords, Slime Family Stone. There's kind of like music that I've listened to more than any other music, if I'm honest, but that I'd never really kind of bowed at the feet of it. Probably wasn't ready for
it in one way or another. So you know, these songs just kind of came out, these stories of people being down and out downtown and flawed people doing their best to get by and things are too easy. I'm sort of suspicious of them. But this particular record was really fun to make. There was never a moment of like, I'm standing on the precipice and I think I'm just going to jump off because it sucks, And you know, there wasn't that sort of dark night of the soul
that kind of usually happens in album making. It was really joyful to make, which again I'm usually suspicious of, but I went with that. I was like, well, maybe I've earned one one.
Like this, I can go back to the painful process of making records. Yeah, I'm just going to go with it. I mean, New York has always had such a strong, sort of detectable sound in so many eras, even up to the past few decades, you know, the tenth of the Century obviously, Yeah, yeah, yeahs the Strokes and later on Animal Collective and all that kind of thing. What does New York sound like sort of now in this decade?
Do you think in this decade? I don't I'm not exactly sure. New York has always had a detectable sound. There's more grit to it. There's there's an edginess to it. If you look at the music that was happening in California at the time, there's a lot of great music happening. But I think of like I think of Steely Dan as New York, and I think of like the fucking Eagles is okay, which the thing with the thing the stories in Steely Dan are cynical, but the music of
the Eagles is cynical. It's different. It's different. One is intentionally cynical in the songwriting, and the other is cynical in a way that thinks that people are stupid.
M maybe the Internet has come along and made things a little bit more disparate. I don't know. I just maybe there's not their pockets of sounds. You know.
I think we're pretty modern. I mean I think that that in the same way where nineties the nineties have made such a comeback. But it's interesting. I wonder if this is how people who lived through the seventies felt, but like when we were in the nineties and like just randomly picking stuff from the seventies and being like cool, cool, this is cool, and people who lived through it would have been like, wait, no, that was no, that's fog hat. You don't put fog hat with I don't know, bell bottoms,
I don't know whatever. So it's just this really interesting kind of postmodern cherry picking of like, oh, okay, cool, there were reviving that thing, which is legitimately cool in the nineties, and then also like grabbing stuff that we were like no, no, no, that was never that was never cool. We didn't like, you know, it's like there is no context. Things plucked from other times, devoid of their context and then rearranged into something new. That's really cool, Like that's how art gets made.
What's your relationship like with the city? Now? Can you can you still walk around New York and get lost in the history and the mythology of the place. There's the sort of buildings and the streets and the smells. Because last time I was there was a few years ago. Now I went. I went to find the Chelsea Hotel and found it all boarded up and there was security and cct CCTV cameras and it was a sort of strange experience but still felt like real history. So yeah,
I wondered what it was like. Oh yeah, how you feel and how your relationship is now with New York?
I think New York it really is a relationship that you have with New York. It's at times you're in love and at times you know it torments you, and at times you know it doesn't even care that you're there, and you're like, wait, but I thought we were friends and no, we've never heard of you in a while. Yeah, exactly.
So it's that kind of place. I mean, I think for me, I lived of life and just a few square blocks really, and when you're walking down the streets, you're like, oh, yeah, I am walking with the ghost of like every artist I loved, every you know, every kind of person has been been in this place, which is nice. I like that. I'm definitely a person who much prefers a city than like some idyllic remote place
that that that I find terrifying. But you know, put me in a city with a bunch of people and things bustling, and I feel safe.
Yeah. It's funny that, Like, I've lived in London now for a long time, and when I go I was born in the countryside, and so when I go home and visit family and it's sort of very quiet at night, I'm just like, I'm pretty sure this is a horror maybe ready to happen, because where are all the sirens? I need it to sleep exactly.
I mean that there's there's no doubt that an ax murder is going to come wrapping on your bedroom door any minute. That's just simply how it goes.
Before we get into a bit more detail on Daddy's home, I wanted to ask a little bit about the end of the mass seduction era, Like when you finished sort of performing that record, I saw you and ended a road festival headlin in that festival with an amazing performance. What are your reflections on that album and the and the end of that period, because we're going back a couple of years now.
I think of it in terms of color. I definitely think about peeling off the latex after a show that I was careering and just there was just a flood of sweat, and that was kind of a metaphor for the I think for the vibe as a whole. It's definitely about structure, about being constrained in a certain way. There's kind of nuclear bruise color palette, you know, there's multi media show like let's take over the senses, let's overwhelm them. Here's here's a slow motion of me getting
in the face. Anyway, just just a real more about I think just power writ large. This one's definitely more about like, hey, come sit in the beat up armchair and like let's have a chat, the midnight chat as it.
Were, Yeah, exactly then.
Like so so forward.
I think I was listening again to it this morning and it's just, yeah, what an amazing record. The what what what's? What's your relationship generally like with your previous work. Once it's it's out there and you've shared it with people, is it almost sort of? I mean obviously there's the live performance aspect, but the recorded side of things, is it? Is it? Once it's done? It's done. Did you ever return to listen back to your your discography as it were?
I really don't. I mean I do every every every so often. Like I went back and listen to Mass Deduction probably about six months ago. Well, I thought, whoa, this is this is a pretty like it's a pretty aggressive record. It's pretty aggressive sounding. It's not it's definitely
not docile. No, definitely, And I think listening back to it with the kind of some of the the intimations I got from press or whatever, you know, interviews that was like, this is a very poppy record I listened back to him, was like not really, I mean I don't not I don't know that this this says middle of the road.
No, it's definitely not.
So so yeah, I was like, whoa, this is this thing kind of rips I really am fond of it, really like fuck yeah. But but obviously you know, once you're Once I'm done with the record, I'm I'm excited to just kind of move on to to something else. Yeah, Like, I don't think I've gone back and listened to self title. I probably haven't heard that and since it came out.
Yeah, I mean it's funny though, isn't it, Because I mean, yeah, I can't imagine many artists kind of going settling down in the living room for in drinks.
You wildly underestimate the narcissism. Yeah, I've heard of many artists who insist that they have their own music playing at photo shoots or you know, when they're doing press or like come in and insist on playing either. I definitely have been sat down, cornered at a party and made to listen to an entire record.
By an artist a photo shoot. I think I would just cringe inside out.
Oh my god listening to my oh God, And that that happens too people like, so, do you want to listen to your record to you know, get into the mood for the photoshop and like, good god, no do I want to do? I want to like watch myself when I'm watching porn Like no, no, I do not Who is this. Who are the people who like this? No?
Exactly, Please just put the Black Midi record on and be done.
With it, exactly. Yeah, I'm going to get some real, really really gnarly photos that way.
You've been really open about the sort of the origins of Daddy's home and the experience of your father going to prison, and it's released a couple of years ago. I don't I don't really want to dwell on that too much because I know you've spoken about it, and.
So I'd love to talk about it. Let's go there.
I can't. I can't see you any but I know it's like, yeah, okay, here, I suppose, I mean, really kind of it's a question about being asked about that. I suppose, because you know, you have been very honest about that experience, and so I suppose as music's been coming out and you've been doing interviews and things like that, how has that fact Has that been okay? Or is it actually ended up feeling a bit intrusive.
It's a mix of both. I think that it's not any kind of story that I would have led with, except that it was told in the press already in a way that was like, that's not that's not my story. I didn't get to tell it. So in this case, you know, as far as things, as far as happy endings can go, this is this has a sort of happy ish ending in that you know, he's out and he's a contributing member to society and to the family and all that stuff. So that that part I don't
That's like, fine, that's all. That's all good. I am where I am with it, and everybody's okay. But yeah, I guess I wanted to tell my story since it had already been told by someone else and I could tell it with like humor and compassion and the more complexity and then but I probably would not have at all mentioned it had it not been kind of uncovered
in a way that was really unfortunate. But also know the title the record is called Daddy's Song, which is to me, it's just the fact that it's I mean literally, I mean it figuratively, I mean it metaphorically, I mean it in a pervy way, I mean sincere way. It just just like, oh my god, that's so I got to call it that.
It almost sounds menacing to me. I mean, it's funny, but it's also it sounds a bit menacing. I don't know. I called on my finger on why I think.
That really, Oh, Daddy's phone like daddy's dad. There's so many, so many meanings, but I hear you with the menacing. It's like daddy's phone and he's got the belt.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I wanted to make a recommendation to you. Actually I don't if you come across the podcast called Prison Back. It's a British podcast, I'm not it's it's it's brilliant, it's it's about I mean, I
know that sort of. I mean there are literally thousands upon thousands of quite sort of mawkish but true crime podcasts that are fascinated with this sort of this theme ovious, we're talking about prison but like it's a British podcast made by UK family about their experience as being the
family on on the on the outside. So it was and all of the weight and emotional baggage and everything that goes with that experience that people simply just don't think about when a member of the family goes to prison. And yeah, I thoroughly recommend it was one of the best things I've heard in the last couple of years, and I just thought, these stories never get told. The people on the outside never get to they don't have
a voice. Generally, it's always like, oh, what's there's this fascination with the other side of things, you know what I mean.
Yeah, for sure. I mean there's a whole lot that that that that being you know, the family of someone incarcerated entails you really you do time with them. Yeah, and there's all kinds of emotions that go along with it. There's like there's the the sadness, the powerlessness, the anger, the shame, the whole you know. Really it really runs the gamut. But yeah, it sucks.
I mean I would say, like I can imagine, But this podcast Prison Backs helped me imagine because it's very like empathetic in terms of articulating that range of emotions that families experienced when this stuff happens. We talked a little bit earlier about how Daddy Tone was actually, in spite of that, or parallel to that, was still a really fun record to make because you got in the studio again with Jack Antonoff, who've worked with before, and
it actually it does feel like a fun record. I mean, it's so groove laden and kind of like and yeah, it's it's fun. There's some pretty salty guitar solos on there, and it's just really deep. It actually reminds me of a record that I absolutely love, which is Childish Gambinos Awake My Love from a few years ago. Just in terms of that. Somehow it just catches this this this energy that transports you to the area that we already talked a little bit about.
The first time I wrote for the record was Somebody Like Me, which I just did. I did in my studio in Los Angeles, and I was just writing to Ray. I didn't have the idea of the record necessarily, and so Jack wasn't there for that, and I was just like jamming in my studio listen kind of more jazz players within the But I came to New York and we were walking into Electric Lady Studios and I said to Jack, like, yeah, I just kind of want to make this like down and out downtown kind of thing.
So we go in and I had this song on the holiday party that I was working on, and Jack started playing Warlitzer and I just picked up an acoustic guitar and it just the song kind of came to life. Just in that session, I had my friend Michael Lindhardt, who actually is the MD for Steely Dan commited warns on it and it was just like, oh, this is it, Like this is the vibe and we don't have to
overthink it. You know. It's like for a long time I didn't want guitars to sound like guitars where I wanted to be just kind of more abstract with sounds. But in this case, they're really they're literal sounds. You could make sure the instruments they're wooden. It's like wood and leather kind of record.
It's earthy. Yeah, it feels earthy. Yeah, really really like acoustic. Yeah.
And for me it comes from a lower place and my body, you know, for me it comes from like, you know, guts and pelvis and abdomen area. It just is a different you know, it's a different, different place.
I think the world it's there is a very underrated instrument as well is that sits on there as well. It sounds.
It's an electric it's a coral electric citar guitar.
It sounds, it sounds brilliant.
Thank you.
I was so My favorite track on the album is Down and it just it really conjures some It makes me want to grow like a handlebar mustache and then slide across some carbonnets. It's just yeah, so.
Yeah. The thing with the sitar guitar is a song like down treated a different way a would have been could have been like new metal, you know what I mean, you know, but and I for a second, I kind of tried it with those you know that stuff being like guitar, and then it just was all feeling too heavy and it needed, like it needs like levity because you're basically saying like if I ever see you, I'll like I will ruin you. So it doesn't need uh,
doesn't need guitars doubling down you. You end up kind of sounding again, it goes into like new metal territories. So if you throw in the sitar guitar, it has it has the brightness and a little kind of it's like a little brittle and langy, but it has like a levity to it that the distorted guitar definitely does not.
And specific reason makes me like just in terms of vision countries that like the Beastie Boys, like Sabotage video or something, I just really you know, completely separate, but I love that. Well, I'm interesting to notice that, Like, I think like a lot of the you said that some of the lot of the material on the record was first takes, So like, how did that feel?
Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I mean, okay, yeah, that's something I'm rue to this day. What I mean is that, I mean there are a couple of first take vocals on there, like you know, the vocal and down and out Downtown. I was like writing the lyrics as I'm singing it and trying things out, and it ended up that with some of the phrasing and stuff, I just couldn't beat the first take. And it's definitely like jamming, you know. It's definitely like, oh we play
through this song and see what's what. And same with jacklineas bass takes and stuff. There's some things that were like, oh, yeah, that's first thought, best thought, but no it's not. It wasn't a it's not a record of like okay, well we did it once and now we're you know, I wasn't that. What I meant is it's all just performed. It's not really a big, crazy production in that kind of modern sense.
You've always been a collaborative artist throughout your career, from David Byrne to Nirvana and Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney. Recently, you created a version of Women and Wives for Paul McCartney's Three Reimagined What goes through a person's mind when you shoot an email off to knowing that the next pair of ears it's going to hit those of an actual beatle? Like how did that feel when you created your version and you're like, Okay, the next person I might hear this.
Yeah, I'll tell you that. I did probably nine versions. Yeah, easily.
I tried this.
I tried that here and there with it before I ended up where I ended up. I got the stems from him, from his team, you know, and there was gotten maybe four tracks is his vocal, a bass, a piano, and drums. And I was like, okay, how can I do this song justice, just do it in a different way. And I listened to his vocal take I mean easily, one hundred times easy, and every time I heard it, I was like, Oh, this gets deeper and richer and more powerful, means something more to me every time, And
I think that that's like, what incredible transcendence? What music. This is where you want to be with music, where every time you listen to it, you get something from it. And there's a lot of music that that kind of takes something from you, honestly, and his just absolutely gives and gives and gives. So anyway, I did it all just in my studio and tried to put a guitar solo on there that would make Paul proud and you know all.
This, Yeah, talk about like scrambling your brain when you know that, Yeah, to go to deliver this to pul McCarthy.
Yeah, yeah. So I finished it up and sent off the master version and I got a call from him, but you know a few months later saying that he really liked it, and he was so nice, and he sounded just like Paul McCartney, you know, and he was just lovely and he talked about his process with making the record and how excited he was about the other collaborations and asked if I had done the backup singing. I said yep, And he asked if I did the guitar solo, and I said yep, And then I said
I did it all. Paul kind of vaguely regret that, but but yeah, he was just as lovely as could be. And then when at the end of the conversation, I just remembered he said, it's it's a great thing. We get to do this music thing, right, And I said, yes, yes, fall it is. And if you've fet out on the amount of hours that people have spent with music that he has made, and these lifetimes and lifetimes and lifetimes of just like joy and emotion and everything that he's
given to people, it's really really amazing. Not all music gives you something. A lot of music takes it away. Personally, I find like.
Oh, no, music that makes you you work hard or take something from you. You mean, can you explain that to you a bit more?
Well, I just seem like I just mean it's not music that I seek out to listen to. I think it's music that just happens like more more times than not. I'm just damning something to be like, oh, remind me never to this on and this is you're getting the tired of me? Sorry, but yeah, no, where You're just like, I don't this takes more energy for me to listen to it than it does then it gives me in the act listening. That's what I that's.
What I mean, You're involvement with them. Sleeza Kinney's record The Censeer Won't Hold a couple of years ago, another album that you've been involved with that I thought it was fantastic. How was it that experience of producing that record. Did it give you a taste of wanting to continue doing that kind of thing, to work in that way with with with other artists.
Yeah, I mean I loved save, been a huge fan since I was a teen, and Carrie's my bestie, so like it was, it was so fun. Yeah, the process was really it was really, really, really fun. I have to say Carrie and Koran, who are the writers in Sleater Kinney. Janet was the drummer, but she's not a writer. So Carrie and Koran just wrote their wrote their asses off and were they wanted to do something different. They wanted to do something that they were just kind of
saying they're old tools. Just they were tired of their old tools. They wanted to do something else. So we just, yeah, we just had a lot of fun making the record.
We already mentioned or I mentioned Black Medy in the podcast. I know that you're a fan of that band. We love back. I love Black Men Social amazing band. When and where do you do you love listening to Black MIDI and you have kind of nice to see that band live yet because they're sort of stunning live band.
Oh I got there. I mean I've seen I've seen YouTube and they're great, but no, I've not. I've not had a chance to see them live yet. I think obviously we've been kind of out of commission in terms of live music for a minute. So but I love to listen to Black Midy in my car and trying to fans listening to Black Mity it like threads the Needles so so well. It's creepy and fucked up angular but like not proggy in a way that is merely athletic.
That's like, you know, intentionally proggy. The drummers so sick. It's just I love Black METI. I'm excited for the new stuff that just came out.
To final question I was gonna ask you, is I subscribe to a record club who send me like a mystery piece of vineyl every month. When they send a record, they send like a cocktail recipe with it as well, And I just wondered if they were to send me Daddy's home. What would you how would you best enjoy that record? What would you sit down and enjoy that record with? In terms of the refreshing.
Beverage, I'd say tequila neat nice a repersad or to quiala neat. If it tastes good, you can sip it, good quality tequila neat. That's what I think.
To find previous episodes of Midnight Chats, simply search your podcast app. Don't forget to hit follow or subscribe to keep up as they're published every week at midnight. For more information on the music magazine that makes this series, visit Loud and Quiet dot com.
Anyway, good night,