Pretty on the Inside: St. Vincent

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JUST TRY NOT to fall in love with Annie Clark. She's the songwriter and multi-intstrumentalist behind St. Vincent, who plays Washington on Saturday. Waifish, adorable and just 23, her outsized resume includes stints playing with Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens' band. But nothing really prepares one for the following awesomeness: Her first band played Iron Maiden covers.

"I played 'The Trooper' at my junior high talent show," says Clark. "I could sing it to you now to prove it." She does. It shreds. "I've got a prog side," she coyly admits.

Yes, that pitter-pat feeling in your chest is a wicked crush forming.

St. Vincent's debut album, "Marry Me" (well, if you insist), is built on Clark's virtuosic guitar, keys and a voice seemingly too big to fit in her body. For someone who drops Alice Coltrane and Captain Beefheart as influences, she sure knows her way around the catalogs of Burt Bacharach and Van Dyke Parks.

Plus, in addition to her band, she uses a birdcage on stage. "Yes, I mean a birdcage," she confirms. And also "claviettas, melodicas, $25 chord organs and basses you play with your feet." Imagine torch songs assembled from fragments of the American avant-garde.

Happily, all the influences adhere under her wry lyrical twists, as in the title track, which sweetly croons, "Marry me, John, I'll be so good to you. You won't realize I'm gone." Thanks to her buttery delivery, some won't realize the irony. Such as the guy who proposed to his girlfriend by joining Clark onstage to sing the song.

"He had practiced the song," says Clark, "but it hadn't dawned on him that there were lyrics that aren't so sweet. He sings 'You won't realize I'm gone,' then realizes, 'No, no, no — it's gotta be happy.' So he sings, 'I'll never be gone.' Obviously, she said yes, and it was a really sweet moment." Phew.

So would she hope for a similar marriage proposal one day? "Oh, yes," Clark says. Ideally at an Iron Maiden show. "Maybe he could come out and puff smoke out of [the band's cadaverous mascot] Eddie's mouth. That's really beautiful, we're onto something."

» Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NW; with Scout Niblett, Sat., 9:30 p.m., $12; 202-388-ROCK.

Writtten by Express contributor Bob Massey
Photo courtesy Force Field PR