Annie Clark is excited about Alaska. The-28-year-old, better known as the musically off-kilter St. Vincent, wants to go to the tundra.
"Wait, you mean you want me to take you to the tundra?" I asked. "Yeah, can we go?" she responded.
Her personable answers are a contrast to her music that at times is eerie and detached. Gracious and warm, she gave meandering answers, often apologizing for the unsexiness of her responses. By the end she tried to conduct her own interview about Alaska -- its weather, its people and its tundra. She still hopes to get to the tundra.
Given the number of people traveling to see her from outside Anchorage, she could probably hitch a ride. Brianna Hutchison is coming from Seward and, if given the opportunity, is more than willing to keep heading north.
"Of course I would," said Hutchison. "Car karaoke would be taken to a whole new level."
The 20-year-old barista's excitement is shared by many around town. She talked admiringly about Clark's voice and ability to play whimsy and eeriness off each other. This will also be Hutchison's first time driving to Anchorage just for a show.
It'll be Clark's first time in Anchorage period, but travels like these have paid off in her budding music career.
That wasn't originally the case. After dropping out of the Berklee School of Music in Boston, she moved to New York City to stake a claim as a musician.
"New York is not a great place to show up with a suitcase and think 'I am gonna make it,' " she said.
Disheartened and contemplating quitting music, she ended up back in Dallas, where she grew up. Then she was asked to join the sprawling pop collective the Polyphonic Spree, and within three weeks, she said, she was playing some of the biggest festivals in Europe.
After that she did a short stint in indie singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens' traveling band, writing her own stuff along the way. Eventually her first St. Vincent album, "Marry Me," appeared on the influential British label Beggars Banquet.
For many the album proved difficult to describe -- often touted as good but a little creepy -- but it earned an eight-out-of-10 review on the oft-persnickety Web magazine Pitchfork. Her follow-up, "Actor," with Clark's signature calm vocals over symphonic and aggressive music, is no less odd considering it was inspired by scores from old films, Disney classics among them. She has called it a film score jumbled with a pop song, but if the press has problems defining her, she isn't aware of it.
"I don't read the press," she said. "It doesn't help you with your craft."
Now back in New York City, headlining shows and receiving critical praise, she still describes herself as part of a new musical middle. She attributed the decline of the large music company to the rise of this class of musician, ones who "work to make music as the goal, not to own mansion boats."
"It's a job," she said. "I mean if you are a writer you write everyday. If you are a musician, you make music everyday. You take it seriously, and you put in the hours."
Clark was exposed to that work ethic early on by her aunt and uncle. Both jazz musicians, they carried her along at age 12 as a "glorified roadie" who they called their tour manager.
And while that road-ready work ethic may not take her to the tundra, she's still excited to play in Alaska. She has talked in the past about how much she likes playing cities that don't get as many shows as some of the bigger markets. Anchorage fits that mold.
"It makes a difference," she said, meandering a bit before coming back to her point. "It's thrilling when you kind of feel that people want it. You get the feeling like 'I'm not going to let you down.' "
By Paul Flahive
Daily News correspondent