ST. VINCENT

NNIE CLARK IS perhaps the most beguiling guitarist to emerge in the past 20 years. The artist known as St. Vincent makes music that is a collision of adept, otherworldly guitar arrangements and propulsive electronica, a mix that has made her a leading light of the alt-rock movement’s genre-subverting strain.

A Berklee grad inspired to learn guitar by grunge acts like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Clark debuted her genre-bending approach on 2007’s , kicking off a career that has had brought her a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album (the first won by a solo female artist in 20 years). She seems poised to repeat that with her latest release, 2021’s . The Grammy-nominated album was recorded partly during lockdown and made with no expectations. “It was truly just having so much fun playing music,” Clark says. “I’d go in and sing a song in my studio, just for fun, just, ‘Oh, I wonder how my voice is going to sound today,’ and the same with putting guitar parts down, just playing for fun and joy. That’s emblematic of the whole process.