#the album version is a pale reflection of what an experience it is when performed live

[combinado]

The Longest Johns - White Frontier

[jkflesh]

Interview with jesu January 2021 New Noise magazine #56

Read the interview by Antoine "Neredude" Duprez below:

The “Terminus” Bandcamp page states that the album was done between 2016 and 2020. That's a long period in your standards! Did you get some sort of writer's block with Jesu? Or was it because you were so busy with your numerous projects?

— I never get writers block, I just simply move on to the next thing if I’m not currently inspired to work on a specific project. Most my records, for many years, have been written and recorded over extended periods of time; I work when inspiration strikes, when it doesn’t I move onto the next thing; there’s never a block for me with creation generally, maybe just specific areas. i take large breaks for my music so as to afford some sort of distance, gone are the times when an album would be hammered out in a month!

''When I Was Small'' has kind of a Radiohead thing in the vocals, whereas ''Alone'' reminds me a lot of Sigur Rós. Are those bands part of your background?

— Ok, interesting observation, but no Radiohead is not an influence on this song, the biggest influences on the vocals were Liam Gallagher from Oasis, and subconsciously "White Flag" by Godflesh (which I only discovered after the album was complete). I do love some Radiohead though, as I do Sigur Rós, but neither band is a direct or conscious influence. Musically “When I was Small” was mostly influenced by trying to recreate a vibe of early Neil Young mixed with Oasis, in a jesu fashion, coupled with a demo production; intentionally underproduced. I’m not sure where a lot of the influence on “Alone” came from, electronic pop music for sure, short and sweet was the intention, driven entirely by the voice sample.

Regarding “Terminus,” did you set yourself a framework or musical approach beforehand like you did for “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came?“

— Not really no, generally when I work on a bunch of songs things will fall into place naturally, the songs become a whole and then collectively the songs will become conceptual as i write, they build their own logic, so to speak, I don’t force anything, I let things happen organically as I write and record.

I think around 2013, you said “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was going to set a precedent for the next album. Now that it's out, do you still think so? Personally, even though both records are different, I can definitely hear a connection.

— Yeah, shame it took 7 years to come to fruition! And many things changed over those 7 years, as ever. Jesu certainly documents my personal journey in life, it’s ultra personal, Godflesh is much more external comparatively. A lot to the solo jesu work took a backseat when I worked on the collaborations with Sun Kil Moon, but that was very refreshing and inspired me to take jesu further, I had notions of discontinuing the project at some point, but the collabs with Sun Kil Moon inspired me to keep pursuing jesu.

"Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was inspired in great part by you becoming a father. Can you tell us a bit about what was on your mind when you wrote “Terminus?”

— That’s very true, especially the initial journey of bringing life into the/our world. everything is there in the lyrics and artwork for "Terminus" so of course, like a lot of my work, depends on the listeners perspectives, they can make it their own, make it personal. But it’s essentially about endings, and my obsession with finality, my sensitivity to it and my fear of it. There’s a line in the title song that says “my end, our end, the end, the end”, which pretty much sums it up.

The EP “Never” you released before “Terminus” is quite different and more focused on electronics. I remember you telling me that you liked going experimental on EPs, doing stuff you wouldn't do on a full length. So I figure that's still the case?

— Yeah, I like experimenting with everything, I like satisfying myself with different ideas, obviously that doesn’t suit my listeners too much, but I make this music for myself, and I’m always trying to do better. I still don’t know why I put myself through the trial and hell of releasing music, I often think about just recording for myself and not bothering with an audience, but I’m not really capable of earning money in other ways, so I have to finish music and release it, let it go. For me "Never" was just another way of interpreting the jesu mood, nothing deviates too much from the original intention of the project. It’s weird, critically, it was perceived as this big electronic departure, whereas jesu has sounded pretty much like this most of it’s lifetime! “Pale Sketches", "Lifeline" even "Silver” is all mostly electronic, save a real drum loop in the song "Silver", but this EP seemed to get this thing that its all electronic, whereas it;’s no more electronically oriented than any other jesu record I have made. jesu is a mood that can be explored and experimented with, I’m not making the first album over and over, some can’t get over that, but that was a different moment in my life which I captured, and as an artist who challenges oneself besides the audience you can never win, and one will generally never win hah. This is a new jesu, it comes with age, transitions. "Never" was intentionally idiosyncratic and deliberately fvcked up sounding, and I think by and large critically the subtleties were lost on people.

“Never” features two version of ''Never There for You'', one of them described as the ''original vision''. Can you explained how you ended up releasing two version of this song?

— The “original vision” existed like that since around 2010, I shelved it, it was to be a Pale Sketcher song, I had an album’s worth of similar songs, I still do, couldn’t decide if they should be jesu or Pale Sketcher. I sent them to Aphex Twin / Richard James because he was a huge fan of the Pale Sketcher EP “Seventh Heaven”, we were talking about a release on his label Rephlex, I had all these songs that were floating between jesu and Pale Sketcher. But then he folded Rephlex for good, a real shame, so I was left with all these songs in limbo, I still am, but at that period I shelved them all. I returned to them around 2018 and started adding guitars and vocals, thinking that they will now definitely be jesu songs. “Never There for You” was one of them, so I wanted the listener to hear what it was originally before I added more of organic me. I’m working on finalising all those songs for Rephlex into future jesu, probably an album that I hope to release late 2021, it’s not a "Terminus" though, and probably most ppl will hate it hah.

“Terminus” is the first album to feature Ted Parsons in a long while. Did you invite him because you felt these songs needed his touch?

— I wanted some live drums, 3 songs only. I was going to play them myself, like on "Opiate Sun". "Infinity" etc, but I really wanted Ted involved and see how he interpreted my drum parts, he always swings something and makes it interesting. he’s a very real drummer, and a very real human being.

When touring is possible again, would you like to tour with Jesu, with Ted on drums?

— I may tour solo, with electronics and projections. The band thing is tiresome and always just sounds like a band, bands bore me these days because of the constraints of the instruments, rock records also bore me these days; same productions, etc, very little actual aesthetic, but its popular and what do I know. But I’d rather jesu now sound hugely expansive live, not just like a rock band. But i’m still unsure. Live drums swallow my voice live, I can’t sing above them, and jesu is a tiny project, can’t play big venues with stage separation and screens around the drums, and 8 guys diving around onstage, it’s not affordable. I stopped performing as jesu for some time due to all those reasons.

You said “Silver” is probably your favourite Jesu record. Are there other Jesu albums that stand out in your mind?

— Did I say that?! Haha. I don’t recall, and that opinion changes every day I feel. I like how concise and all encompassing "Silver" is; it covers most of the ground that I feel the project should cover. But "Terminus" is my favourite jesu album, and it should be, otherwise I would not feel I was moving forward, and I feel I am, it is the best jesu album I have made.

Last year, you told Olivier ''Zoltar'' Badin that the next Zonal album would probably go in the direction of it's title track ''Wrecked''. Is it still true to this day and what can you tell us about that upcoming album?

— Well, a lot of time has passed since, but I think Kevin and I are still quite struck on that song as a template for future recordings, although everything changes all the time, of course, and time is passing fast once again, we haven’t discussed Zonal in some time.

I know you don't actually consider yourself as a guitarist. With you focusing on your electronic projects like JK Flesh and Zonal lately, do you ever get tired of guitar? I'm asking this because I recently discussed the subject with Steven Wilson. He basically told me that after 30 years writing and doing gigs with guitar, he's feeling more creative and excited when writing music on other instruments and I wondered if you ever felt something similar.

— All instruments are just a means to an end for me; a tool for the bigger job, I don’t really wish to be overly proficient at any instrument, I liked that about punk, and it’s what I’m not that fond of about overly progressive music, it’s like it’s for show, I don’t do anything for show, I’d rather be shit than great, it’s more interesting, it reflects the human condition, imperfection. I don’t wish for things to sound perfect, whatever that is, people should not come to my music for that, they probably don’t and it’s probably why my audience is so small haha.

I recently discovered that you worked with Josh Eustis with the mastering of the JK Flesh / Orphx live album and was a bit surprised. How did that happen?

— Josh is a very good friend of Dominick Fernow’s (Prurient / Vatican Shadow / Hospital Productions, etc), and Dominick is a very close friend of mine. I was aware that Josh does very good mastering besides being an extremely talented artist, so Dominick suggested josh master that collaboration, and it sounds excellent!

I interviewed Lee Dorrian some time ago and we were talking about the impact Napalm Death had, not just the band itself but all the bands who were formed after playing in that band: Godflesh, Carcass, Cathedral, Scorn... Lee thought this legacy had a lot to do with John Peel broadcasting a wide array of music on young aspiring musicians. How would you explain such creativity and versatility from musicians who all played in Napalm Death at one point?

—  Lee is absolutely correct, a lot of very young kids listened to John Peel, most generations did, his taste exposed music to many of us who were already enquiring at a young age that we would not have heard anywhere else and of course back then this centralised things, not fragmented them like the internet does; a kid now can absorb an artist entire catalog in an hour, speed listen to it all, then have an opinion, but it’s informed, no context, no history, no experience. We heard music then on Peel and then hunted it down. It took work, valuable work that paid dividends. Peel’s broad appreciation of eternally subversive music and otherwise told us that music didnt need to exist in such strict compartments, that’s it’s all part of a greater whole, so when groups of musicians collaborated even at such young ages, our tastes were informed and wide, very rarely singular.

Can you tell us a bit about you latest remixing output? What were the tracks that you enjoyed the most remixing? Those are the names I could find: Full of Hell, Oathbreaker and a lot of projects I've never heard of.

— I always and love to remix, I love the fact that I didn’t create this music but can make something new from someone else’s work. Music is endless, for me, it’s just when you wish to end it, but ultimately it can never end. I have some remixes that I love moire than others, but only over time, I never let a remix go unless I am as happy as can be with it. Sometimes I would’ve loved to have done more, my Killing Joke remix is a good example of that, I wanted to go further, but Youth of Killing Joke told me they were happy with where I was at, I think I could’ve made it much better. The Oathbreaker remix you mentioned is a favourite of mine from the last years worth of my remixes. I’ll remix anyone, if they can afford my fee and I have the time!

I'm curious, since you released some of your music with your own label with Godflesh, Jesu and other projects, did it have an impact on the revenue you got from streaming platforms like Spotify, compared to albums released on Earache or Hydra Head? I'm asking this in the light of the neverending controversy regarding streaming revenue for musicians.

— On my own label more money can be earned from these services due to no split with another label, which usually would be 50/50, but streaming is very small as is common knowledge. I never see any royalties from Earache so can’t compare their rates etc since Godflesh is constantly recouping an advance from Columbia / Sony for the "Selfless" album that Earache, contractually, can recoup from, even though they didn’t give the advance, so they’re making money from the band and from an advance they never paid, which these days you would think that besides being unethical that it would be criminal, but such were the contracts in the 80’s / 90’s. So I’ve never seen a single penny from streaming with Earache!

I know it might be pointless to ask you, since someone's mind can change with time but do you still think “Post Self” may be your last album with Godflesh? Your told us last year that you weren't sure if you had enough in you creatively to do another album and also that the constant screaming was a bit harder to do.

— Hah, the shouting/screaming live now takes its toll, it does with age, I’m unsure due to not performing for so long thanks to the pandemic how my voice would be for Godflesh now in a live setting, I’d have very little problem in the studio. I’m still struck on the fact that there may not be another full length studio album from Godflesh, I haven’t been inspired to initiate one for numerous reasons, and I don’t wish for us to repeat ourselves in any way, I do have a lot of interesting old material though, some good rare stuff, demos, “Us and Them in Dub” which is also in the works, but I work on that sporadically, when I feel inspired to do so. So there’s a lot of good stuff coming.

Last time I interviewed you in 2014, Aphex Twin was making his grand return with “Syro”. I remember you telling me that the album was still shrinkwrapped on your desk. Knowing you're a big Aphex fan, I wanted to know if you liked that album, especially knowing that a lot of fans were disappointed by it.

— Ahh it was such a long time ago now that we spoke last! I love "Syro”, but I love Aphex, and since I first heard "Didgeridoo" when it was released and then "Quoth", he will always be a favourite, "Syro" may not be an Aphex favourite for me, but it’s still amazing, he is amazing; creative, subversive and doesn’t give a fvck ultimately, he’d also never release anything if he didnt really have to, he does this for himself, for me the best art is entirely selfish and should consider no one. People are always disappointed, a lot of people just can’t live with the fact that an artist strays from their own personal conception of what an artist should be, it’s some sort of misguided entitlement, I lost that when II was around 14, a lot of people don’t lose it and now these people have the internet. No artist owes me anything, if they gave me one thing in my life then i will always respect their art, regardless of whether it works for me or not, and if I don’t like it much, I won’t be peddling that opinion on the internet in an entitled egotistical manner, I’m glad I did not know that a lot of people were disappointed, haha.

Thank you very much! Best JKB, Jan 2021

[wonderland-irwin]

CALM & Synesthesia — Introduction

A few years ago after Youngblood came out, I posted on here a question, and it was rather simple, and it was like “does anyone else see colour when they hear music?” And then I listed a few examples of songs and the colours I saw. Someone actually responded and said no, but that I should search up Synesthesia, because I probably had that.

I was first of all, extremely surprised that no one else saw colours when they heard music. When I reflect back on my relationship with music (music being my one true love), I realize that colours were always there, I just never recognized it until the 2018 release of Youngblood.

Second of all, I was shocked to hear that these colours and what was happening has a name. It’s a real thing. I have a super active imagination, which probably stimulated and woke this part of my brain up and caused me to become more aware of it, but to find out that I wasn’t crazy was a relief as it was shocking.

Synesthesia (which I can never say aloud with it sounding like a sneeze), in basic terms if you don’t know what it is, is sort of labeling things with a colour. A very common form of Synesthesia is words or numbers to colour. I must add here that forms of Synesthesia cross over, so if you have one type, you most likely also have forms of other types. My main form of this is called Chromesethia, which is sound to colour, but the number seven for me is a pale blue, as is the word February.

Synesthesia cannot be forced. It usually happens unwillingly. Personally with Chromesethia, if there’s a lot going on in my brain or in the world, the patterns still occur, however sort of broken up like a shattered piece of a mirror. It affects very little of the population and some people when in drug hallucinations, may also experience forms of Synesthesia.

I have thought for a while about sharing what I see for a while. I’ve tried to do it with words, but when I see patterns and colours, words don’t really do it justice. So with the recent release of the heartbreakingly beautiful, CALM, I figured this would be a great time to explain first how Synesthesia works for me personally, and take you on a hauntingly disturbing tour of the twelve songs, plus whatever deluxe songs arrive, from 5 Seconds of Summer’s CALM.

Before we get into the songs, though, this part, the introduction, is about how Chromesethia is broken down in my brain.

So this form of Synesthesia is sound to colour. We’re going to start with simple notes, as a song writer may, and build from there.

Each note for me, is assigned a colour. I played trumpet in my high school band, an instrument in C, so my B Flat concert scale starts and ends with C. C itself is a gold colour, G is magenta, A is red, B is Blue, F is green, E is brown, D is a dark grey.

Apparently I can’t put the scale in order today, oh my.

Moving on, those colours are pretty much the same colour wherever they are on the staff, although as the sound does get higher (high C for example) the colour quality diminishes slightly, and becomes more of a white space (Think of it like a light blub, where the centre is the brightest, but has the least colour, and as you zoom out, colour slowly occurs).

In regard to flats and sharps, they will be a paler form of the original colour. So for example, F is green. When you think of green, regular green, this green, that is the green of F. F# for example, is a slightly lighter green. I think this is because that it’s not exactly the full version of itself. Does that make sense? It’s not quite F, therefore F# is not quite that shade of green.

It works with flats too. If you told me to play a Gb, I would see a slightly lighter magenta colour. Not completely the brightness and stricking pink of magenta, but pink enough that it is still a G note.

Instruments also have an effect on my brain. If you were to pull out a flute and play a solid tone, and my brain were to focus on the sound of the flute and not the note the flute was playing, it was see pastel purple or pink. The flute is a rather light and airy instrument, and the colours would the reflect on that sound. However, if you were to pick up a tuba and play a note, I would probably see a darker colour, like navy blue.

Voices also have this effect. If I’m paying great attention to a voice, or I specifically like that voice, I will hear a colour (that sounds so weird. I’ll hear a colour). If there are many people in a room and there’s lots of chatter, then I probably won’t see anything because I can’t focus on one specific element. People singing also have an effect. Sometimes it is a shade or two off of their regular voice, it might be the same colour, or a completely different colour.

Since we’re talking CALM;

Ashton: Ashton has a red voice. When he speaks it’s red. Like just your regular crayon red. However when his voice gets soft like in videos where he’s updating us, thanking us, telling us he loves us, his voice goes to a paler red. I wouldn’t say his voice goes pink, which is a paler red, but the red definitely gets lighter and softer.

When Ash is excited or pumped up or performing, his voice goes to a dark red, like a cherry, and black sort of flicks in every once in a while.

His singing voice follows the same pattern as his speaking voice.

The drums, as that is his instrument, are two different colours. His snares, Toms, anything that gives a solid sound is usually shades of light grey. His bass drum gives dark grey vibes (the tuba/flute effect). And the cymbals are that light and airy sound so they’re gold, breaking that white high sound.

Luke: Luke’s voice is all over the place. He is blue when he talks in his normal voice, green when he sings. I should mention that Luke’s, as well as Ashton’s, falsettos are those white space colours as well. Anyways, the blue is sort of the same when ever he speaks, if you want to search up Prismacolour pencils crayons permanent blue, that’s the colour of his voice. Luke’s singing voice is that green and it shows change as movement through squiggles (aside from falsettos). I’ll explain movement in a bit.

Calum: it doesn’t matter what Calum’s doing whether talking or singing, he is either a chocolate brown colour or the colour of honey. I feel like that shows his range. Calum is very soft when he speaks or sings, and those colours to me are soft colours so they make sense as to why they’re Calum’s colours.

The bass is black and surprisingly gold. Deeper sounding instruments are very dark in relation to the colour. However, I think in the case of bass, specifically Cal’s bass, I find the instrument interesting, and I love playing it myself, so maybe that’s why the gold comes through. Sometimes the colour is just there, and I can’t explain it, just gotta accept it.

Michael: Michael is very interesting because his colours are never really the same. When he speaks, sometimes he’s turquoise, sometimes he’s black, sometimes it’s grey, and then the shades varying between those colours, which is super interesting. His singing voice is kind of scratchy looking. If you took a scratch board and a fork and scratched it up, so it was black with white or grey peaking through, that’s his singing voice. Michael’s voice whether singing or speaking is a mystery to me, but also makes complete sense at the same time. 

His guitar, any guitar for that matter, has two different looks in my brain. 

When its a single note, even if I can tell what that note is, it’s gold. It doesn’t matter. It’s a black space with gold dots that are the notes. 

Okay, now the bass is making sense to me, lol.

When chords are playing, it’s more of a gold square with black lines in a grid pattern (like the neck of a guitar).

So guitars are black and gold, I guess.

Synesthesia is something I am still learning about, so here for example, I never made this connection before.

In terms of what songs look like, most times they reflect nothing of the voice or instruments used. With songs it’s more of an overall picture, colours and patterns taken perhaps from mood rather than notes. Sometimes songs have movement, which reflects the pace of the song, and sometimes there is none. In terms of voice, like mentioned with Luke, when I focus on his singing, it’s a green line moving up and down as he sings over top of the overall picture of the song. Sometimes songs have different images as it moves along, but it will usually look the same and the movement most likely changes instead of the picture. Regarding the colours I see, I usually see no more than 5-7 colours, on average, a song has at least 3. The amount of colours is usually an odd number, which I don’t quite understand, but it’s cool.

I think this is all I want to say about what it’s like for me with Chromesthesia. If I remember anything I will add it into other parts, and each part will have the previous parts tagged to it, so you can find the entire album.

If you have any questions, my inboxes are open!

Red Desert will come out once I finish the colouring. Red Desert’s colours are super bright so I need to colour hard and my pencils are dying. I was colouring it to Thin White Lies last night, which hurt when your eyes are looking at Red Desert but your mind is hearing and seeing Thin White Lies. Tell me why I did that. 

OH! Speaking of that, actually, if I see artwork that doesn’t match what my head sees, it will either give me a panic attack or I can’t look at it, because my brain will hurt (a rude side effect that I cannot control). My brain is set in its way and I can’t really change it. This is out of my control. That’s what Synesthesia is.

Lastly, the boys of 5 Seconds of Summer are FANTASTIC at finding a similar, if not the same, colour pallet for their songs that I see. Whether or not any of them have it, I do not know, but I’m glad they’re at least on the same page so my head doesn’t explode when their art comes out.

Okay, NOW I think I’ve said everything. Red Desert will be out soon with a blurb. My inbox is always open for questions! I hope y’all enjoy this thread!

~ becca

P.S if you wanna be tagged in the next parts, I don’t know who’s interested, but let me know!!

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

Switching Lanes With St. Vincent

By Molly Young

January 22, 2019

Jacket (men’s), $4,900, pants (men’s), $2,300, by Dior / Men shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Rings (throughout) by Cartier

On a cold recent night in Brooklyn, St. Vincent appeared onstage in a Saint Laurent smoking jacket to much clapping and hooting, gave the crowd a deadpan look, and said, “Without being reductive, I'd like to say that we haven't actually done anything yet.” Pause. “So let's do something.”

She launched into a cover of Lou Reed's “Perfect Day”: an arty torch-song version that made you really wonder whom she was thinking about when she sang it. This was the elusive chanteuse version of St. Vincent, at least 80 percent leg, with slicked-back hair and pale, pale skin. She belted, sipped from a tumbler of tequila (“Oh, Christ on a cracker, that's strong”), executed little feints and pounces, flung the mic cord away from herself like a filthy sock, and spat on the stage a bunch of times. Nine parts Judy Garland, one part GG Allin.

If the Garland-Allin combination suggests that St. Vincent is an acquired taste, she's one that has been acquired by a wide range of fans. The crowd in Brooklyn included young women with Haircuts in pastel fur and guys with beards of widely varying intentionality. There was a woman of at least 90 years and a Hasidic guy in a tall hat, which was too bad for whoever sat behind him. There were models, full nuclear families, and even a solitary frat bro. St. Vincent brings people together.

If you chart the career of Annie Clark, which is St. Vincent's civilian name, you will see what start-up founders and venture capitalists call “hockey-stick growth.” That is, a line that moves steadily in a northeast direction until it hits an “inflection point” and shoots steeply upward. It's called hockey-stick growth because…it looks like a hockey stick.

Dress, by Balmain

The toe of the stick starts with Marry Me, Clark's debut solo album, which came out a decade ago and established a few things that would become essential St. Vincent traits: her ability to play a zillion instruments (she's credited on the album with everything from dulcimer to vibraphone), her highbrow streak (Shakespeare citations), her goofy streak (“Marry me!” is an Arrested Development bit), and her oceanic library of musical references (Kate Bush, Steve Reich, uh…D'Angelo!). The blade of the stick is her next four albums, one of them a collaboration with David Byrne, all of them confirming her presence as an enigma of indie pop and a guitar genius. The stick of the stick took a non-musical detour in 2016, when Clark was photographed canoodling with (now ex-) girlfriend Cara Delevingne at Taylor Swift's mansion, followed a few months later by pictures of Clark holding hands with Kristen Stewart. That brought her to the realm of mainstream paparazzi-pictures-in-the-Daily-Mail celebrity. Finally, the top of the stick is Masseduction, the 2017 album she co-produced with Jack Antonoff, which revealed St. Vincent to be not only experimental and beguiling but capable of turning out incorrigible bangers.

Masseduction made the case that Clark could be as much a pop star as someone like Sia or Nicki Minaj—a performer whose idiosyncrasies didn't have to be tamped down for mainstream success but could actually be amplified. The artist Bruce Nauman once said he made work that was like “going up the stairs in the dark and either having an extra stair that you didn't expect or not having one that you thought was going to be there.” The idea applies to Masseduction: Into the familiar form of a pop song Clark introduces surprising missteps, unexpected additions and subtractions. The album reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The David Bowie comparisons got louder.

This past fall, she released MassEducation (not quite the same title; note the addition of the letter a), which turned a dozen of the tracks into stripped-down piano songs. Although technically off duty after being on tour for nearly all of 2018, Clark has been performing the reduced songs here and there in small venues with her collaborator, the composer and pianist Thomas Bartlett. Whereas the Masseduction tour involved a lot of latex, neon, choreographed sex-robot dance moves, and LED screens, these recent shows have been comparatively austere. When she performed in Brooklyn, the stage was empty, aside from a piano and a side table. There were blue lights, a little piped-in fog for atmosphere, and that was it. It looked like an early-'90s magazine ad for premium liquor: art-directed, yes, but not to the degree that it Pinterested itself.

Coat, (men’s) $8,475, by Versace / Shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Tights, by Wolford

The performance was similarly informal. Midway through one song, Clark forgot the lyrics and halted. “It takes a different energy to be performing [than] to sit in your sweatpants watching Babylon Berlin,” she said. “Wherever I am, I completely forget the past, and I'm like. ‘This is now.’ And sometimes this means forgetting song lyrics. So, if you will…tell me what the second fucking verse is.”

Clark has only a decade in the public eye behind her, but she's accomplished a good amount of shape-shifting. An openness to the full range of human expression, in fact, is kind of a requirement for being a St. Vincent fan. This is a person who has appeared in the front row at Chanel and also a person who played a gig dressed as a toilet, a person profiled in Vogue and on the cover of Guitar World.

The day before her Brooklyn show, I sat with Clark to find out what it's like to be utterly unstructured, time-wise, after a long stretch of knowing a year in advance that she had to be in, like, Denmark on July 4 and couldn't make plans with friends.

“I've been off tour now for three weeks,” she said. “When I say ‘off,’ I mean I didn't have to travel.”

This doesn't mean she hasn't traveled—she went to L.A. to get in the studio with Sleater-Kinney and also hopped down to Texas, where she grew up—just that she hasn't been contractually obligated to travel. What else did she do on her mini-vacation?

“I had the best weekend last weekend. I woke up and did hot Pilates, and then I got a bunch of new modular synths, and I set 'em up, and I spent ten hours with modular synths. Plugging things in. What happens when I do this? I'm unburdened by a full understanding of what's going on, so I'm very willing to experiment.”

Coat, by Boss

Jacket, and coat, by Boss / Necklace, by Cartier

Like a child?

“Exactly. Did you ever get those electronics kits as a kid for like 20 bucks from RadioShack? Where you connect this wire to that one and a light bulb turns on? It's very much like that.”

There's an element of chaos, she said, that makes synth noodling a neat way to stumble on melodies that she might not have consciously assembled. She played with the synths by herself all day. “I don't stop, necessarily,” she said, reflecting on what the idea of “vacation” means to someone for whom “job” and “things I love to do” happen to overlap more or less exactly. “I just get to do other things that are really fun. I'm in control of my time.” She had plans to see a show at the New Museum, read books, play music and see movies alone, always sitting on the aisle so she could make a quick escape if necessary. But she will probably keep working. St. Vincent doesn't have hobbies.

When it manifests in a person, this synergy between life and work is an almost physically perceptible quality, like having brown eyes or one leg or being beautiful. Like beauty, it's a result of luck, and a quality that can invoke total despair in people who aren't themselves allotted it. This isn't to say that Clark's career is a stroke of unearned fortune but that her skills and character and era and influences have collided into a perfect storm of realized talent. And to have talent and realize that talent and then be beloved by thousands for exactly the thing that is most special about you: Is there anything a person could possibly want more? Is this why Annie Clark glows? Or is it because she's super pale? Or was it because there was a sound coming through the window where we sat that sounded thrillingly familiar?

“Is Amy Sedaris running by?” Clark asked, her spine straightening. A man with a boom mic was visible on the sidewalk outside. Another guy in a baseball cap issued instructions to someone beyond the window. Someone said “Action!” and a figure in vampire makeup and a clown wig streaked across the sidewalk. Someone said “Cut!” and Clark zipped over for a look. It was, in fact, Amy Sedaris, her clown wig bobbing in the 44-degree breeze. The mic operator was gagging with laughter. It seemed like a good omen, this sighting, like the New York City version of Groundhog Day: If an Amy Sedaris streaks across your sight line in vampire makeup, spring will arrive early.

Blazer (men’s) $1,125, by Paul Smith

Another thing Clark does when off tour is absorb all the input that she misses when she's locked into performance mode. On a Monday afternoon, she met artist Lisa Yuskavage at an exhibition of her paintings at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea. Yuskavage was part of a mini-boom of figurative painting in the '90s, turning out portraits of Penthouse centerfolds and giant-jugged babes with Rembrandt-esque skill. It made sense that Clark wanted to meet her: Both women make art about the inner lives of female figures, both are sorcerers of technique, both are theatrical but introspective, both have incendiary style. The gallery was a white cube, skylit, with paintings around the perimeter. Yuskavage and Clark wandered through at a pace exclusive to walking tours of cultural spaces, which is to say a few steps every 10 to 15 seconds with pauses between for the proper amount of motionless appreciation.

The paintings were small, all about the size of a human head, and featured a lot of nipples, tufted pudenda, tan lines, majestic asses, and protruding tongues. “I like the idea of possessing something by painting it,” Yuskavage said. “That's the way I understand the world. Like a dog licking something.”

Clark looked at the works with the expression people make when they're meditating. She was wearing elfin boots, black pants, and a shirt with a print that I can only describe as “funky”—“funky” being an adjective that looks good on very few people, St. Vincent being one of them—and sipped from a cup of espresso furnished by a gallery minion. After she finished the drink, there was a moment when she looked blankly at the saucer, unsure what to do with it, and then stuck it in the breast pocket of her funky shirt for the rest of the tour.

A painting called Sweetpuss featured a bubble-butted blonde in beaded panties with nipples so upwardly erect they actually resembled little boners. Yuskavage based the underwear on a pair of real underwear that she'd constructed herself from colored balls and string. “I've got the beaded panties if you ever need 'em,” she said to Clark. “They might fit you. They're tiny.”

Earrings, by Erickson Beamon

“I'm picturing you going to the Garment District,” Clark said.

“There was a lot of going to the Garment District.”

As they completed their lap around the white cube, Clark interjected with questions—what year was this? were you considering getting into film? how long did these sittings take? what does “mise-en-scène” mean?—but mainly listened. And she is a good listener: an inquisitive head tilter, an encouraging nodder, a non-fidgeter, a maker of eye contact. She found analogues between painting and music. When Yuskavage mourned the death of lead white paint (due to its poisonous qualities, although, as the artist pointed out, “It's not that big a deal to not get lead poisoning; just don't eat the paint”), Clark compared it to recording's transition from tape to digital.

“Back in the day, if you wanted to hear something really reverberant”—she clapped; it reverberated—“you'd have to be in a room like this and record it, or make a reverb chamber,” Clark said. “Now we have digital plug-ins where you can say, ‘Oh, I want the acoustic resonance of the Sistine Chapel.’ Great. Somebody's gone and sampled that and created an algorithm that sounds like you're in the Sistine Chapel.”

Lately, she said, she's been way more into devices that betray their imperfections. That are slightly out of tune, or capable of messing up, or less forgiving of human intervention. “Air moving through a room,” Clark said. “That's what's interesting to me.”

They kept pacing. The paintings on the wall evolved. Conversation turned to what happens when you grow as an artist and people respond by flipping out.

“I always find it interesting when someone wants you to go back to ‘when you were good,’ ” Yuskavage said. “This is why we liked you.”

“I can't think of anybody where I go, ‘What's great about that artist is their consistency, ” Clark said. “Anything that stays the same for too long dies. It fails to capture people's imagination.”

Coat (mens), $1,150, by Acne Studios

They were identifying a problem with fans, of course, not with themselves. It was an implicit identification, because performers aren't permitted to critique their audiences, and it was definitely the artistic equivalent of a First World problem—an issue that arises only when you're so resplendent with talent that you not only nail something enough to attract adoration but nail it hard enough to get personally bored and move on—but it was still valid. They were talking about the kind of fan who clings to a specific tree when he or she could be roaming through a whole forest. In St. Vincent's case, a forest of prog-rock thickets and jazzy roots and orchestral brambles and mournful-ballad underlayers, all of it sprouting and molting under a prodigious pop canopy. They were talking about the strange phenomenon of people getting mad at you for surprising them. Even if the surprise is great.

Molly Young is a writer living in New York City. She wrote about Donatella Versace in the April 2018 issue of GQ.

A version of this story originally appeared in the February 2019 issue with the title "Switching Lanes With St. Vincent."