Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.She is now on her seventh album, but Annie Clark, who trades as St Vincent, has never performed at the Royal Albert Hall before. This feels like an oversight. Both she and the London venue are showy, technically dazzling and unique in their bold style — and on Saturday she commanded the space like a musician perfectly at home.Which St Vincent was present, however, was harder to decipher. Although she has a clear pop ear — she has duetted with Dua Lipa and co-wrote Taylor Swift’s huge hit “Cruel Summer” — her own songs tend to be heavy with scenic route diversions. On past albums she has played the part of cult leader, dominatrix or transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling. Of her new album, All Born Screaming, she has said: “There’s no character — it’s just me.” Producing alone for the first time, she largely favoured a weighty industrial rock sound over her previous electronic hyperactivity.That didn’t necessarily mean that the Albert Hall audience got to see the real Annie Clark from Dallas. She has been too exposed before, blinded by flashbulbs during a spell dating the supermodel Cara Delevingne, and being asked more questions than she would have liked about her father’s 2019 release after nine years in prison for financial fraud. Here she delivered the first song, “Reckless”, in silhouette beneath one of three moving archways. Dressed in short skirt and suit jacket, like one of the models in Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video, she didn’t acknowledge the audience until she was six songs into the show.But if guitars could talk, hers made a barnstorming speech. She and guitarist Jason Falkner summoned sounds from outer space on “Marrow”, stomping funkiness on “Big Time Nothing” and riffs like falling anvils on “Flea”. The signature shape of her personalised instrument — sharp-cornered and near-symmetrical — suited the futuristic styling of many of her songs, particularly the audacious electro rock of those drawn from 2017’s Masseduction. For someone with such a strong sense of the theatrical, the stage set-up was surprisingly simple: those arches pushed around by hand, three big screens that were actually pretty small, functional lighting and five musicians. This allowed for a more raw kind of excitement when a cameraman loomed millimetres from her face during “Pay Your Way in Pain”. When she ran into the crowd and rolled around on the floor during punky rarity “Krokodil”, she briefly allowed herself loose from her imperious self-control. An audience member even got a warm hug when she ventured up the stairs into the stalls.She showed some emotion before new song “Sweetest Fruit”, which referenced the accidental death in 2021 of the music producer Sophie. “We’re all here for one reason and that reason is love,” she said. “There’s no other fucking reason to do anything.”The racing, Giorgio Moroder-inspired synth-pop of “Sugarboy” brought the set to a fizzing climax before a slow-burning finale in the title track of the new album. No encore, no goodbye, but the many versions of St Vincent were all fascinating company.★★★★☆ilovestvincent.com
