Midway through my interview with Annie Clark, AKA the critically lauded, Grammy-winning, art-rock experimentalist St Vincent, a thumbs up emoji appears next to her head. We are talking on Zoom, and Clark is waxing lyrical about her emotionally lacerating new album, the self-produced All Born Screaming. She lets out a sigh, mumbling something about a setting on her computer she can’t change. She tests it again by doing an exaggerated double thumbs up, only for the screen to be filled with poorly animated fireworks. It all feels very surreal. “Maybe next time I say a solid quote, like a ‘Let’s make it the pullquote’ one, I’ll just put two thumbs up,” she laughs.
It is not the first time Clark, 41, has attempted to subvert the interview experience, albeit this time accidentally. Around the release of 2017’s Masseduction, her “morbidly funny”, sad and sexy fifth album, she asked journalists to crawl into a freshly painted neon pink box to ask her questions. “I was sitting in paint fumes for 12 hours – as sadistic as it seemed, trust me
