St. Vincent - Not the College in Latrobe where the Stillers practice

So last night Annie Clark and her band St. Vincent landed at Diesel in the Southside. I attended the show with my new side-project bandmate (see our acoustic chamber pop act "The Snow Drifts" coming soon to a chill venue near you) and we both agreed that Annie and her band put on quite a show. As many of you probably know, Annie has played with Sufjan Stevens and it was clear from the start that her band was going to utilize a vast array of instruments as well. In addition to the standard line-up of guitar, bass and drums, many of the songs featured synth, violin, flute, clarinet or saxophone.

Right from the start, Annie hits you with her amazing vocals. She has great pipes and really uses her range well to contrast what can be some intense instrumentation from her band - it's very striking to hear live. This is a good example of when a studio album can't do an artist or a band justice - some things are just better in a live setting no matter what kind of pro-turntable and tube amplifier your use in your geek-den.

Annie played many songs off of Actor; some high points for me were "The Strangers" and "Actor Out of Work". For the encore, she also played an awesome, solo rendition of "Paris is Burning", which highlighted her guitar work and finger picking proficiency. By the way, she can absolutely shred as well. On several songs, her insane shredding brought her to her knees Hendrix-flaming-guitar-style. Unfortunately, because Diesel was so packed I missed a lot of what she was doing at that point, so I'll have to leave it to my imagination and yours.

Overall, a tight set with a bare bones psychedelic feel due to the strobe lights and smoke machine. There are only two negatives that I will point out: (1) Annie's guitar was mixed very low at the beginning of the set and was completely drowned out by the drums and synth on several early songs; and (2) because the crowd was so large, we were stuck near the men's bathroom on the first floor and the dude who hands you towels and sells single cigarettes had the door wide-open. That wouldn't be noteworthy enough to make this review, but he was also watching some movie on a mini-DVD player with the volume turned up loud enough to hear during the show. Now I'm all in favor of free enterprise and I'm sure it sucks sitting in a men's bathroom next to a couple commodes and some urinals all night, but either put on some headphones or shut the damn door. Thankfully, somebody finally had him lower the volume, and eventually he shut the door, but still! That might be perfectly fine on a "normal" Saturday night when Diesel turns into a sweat factory, but not during a St. Vincent show.

So anyway, kudos to the Pittsburgh music contingency for coming out en masse on a Sunday night at Diesel for a killer show, and kudos to Annie and her band for making it completely worth it.