After fighting my way through the massive crowd for Florence + The Machine, who were playing opposite Annie Clark on the other side of the island, I made it just in time for St. Vincent to light up the stage to an audience that was small but very passionate. The anemic crowd was probably a result of all the kids hanging out waiting for Drake, but it felt appropriate that one of our greatest working rock stars would get overshadowed by hype and spectacle. Perpetually the underdog, even when she’s playing dress-up as the futuritsic queen of the universe. This was my first time seeing St. Vincent live, and it hit me halfway through her set how fucking weird a lot of her music is, and how great it is that she’s as popular as she is. Clark knows how to drive home a hook, but they’re all wrapped in barbed wire. That’s especially true of her live set, where a track like “Bring Me Your Loves” — in my opinion one of the weaker ones on her self-titled — is twisted into a knotty, sprawling, dirge-y monster that not only hits hard, but is difficult to listen to in a way that a lot of her recorded output isn’t. The complexities abound, and it’s rewired how I think about St. Vincent in a significant way. She ended the show on a goddamn stretcher, showing off her immeasurable guitar skills while lying down like it was taking everything out of her. She didn’t do any speaker-climbing this time around, but the rest of the performance was kvlt as fuck. –James