A scream marks the beginning of most people's lives. While we rejoice and celebrate the miracle of birth and anticipate a destiny filled with greatness, the newborn emerges from the womb covered in amniotic secretions, shrieking and scowling with a reluctancy to that which has just commenced. Perhaps this is the very disparity that Annie Clark of St. Vincent wishes to draw our attention to with her seventh album, All Born Screaming. Her credentials as a musician and world-class artist need not be questioned, along with her own signature guitar, she possesses an ever-evolving palette of music with a back catalogue of albums and releases that stretch all the way back to 2006, the beginning of St. Vincent.

The most distinguishing aspect that stands out in Clark’s work is the level of involvement she has with her music. Early on in our conversation, she shares, “I find the process completely mysterious. I have no idea how I write my music. I just try and follow and fall down and get back up until it feels right and feels real.” As a multi-talented musician, she weaves together a symphony of instruments, tools and techniques into songs that are nothing short of a theatrical masterpiece. Clark says that her hierarchy of musicality would start with songwriter, then producer and arranger, with a guitar player next in line.

“I love guitar, and it’s my first love, but I just look at my guitar and think: Okay, is this a weapon? Is it a shield? Is the song calling for guitar? Does the song need a guitar? If the song needs guitar, then yes, I will put guitar there. And sometimes, I will set guitar to the side.” Clarke has come to be known for her finesse as a guitarist. Although she is praised for her grace on the fretboard, her richness as a composer lies in her ability to survey her skills and adopt the appropriate material.

For Clark, a song does not begin with a meaning; there is no foreknowledge leading into its inception. Rather, it is an unfolding voyage of discovery guided by an intuitive prescience, “I just find it. I find what’s calling me.”

The track ‘Broken Man’ is exemplary of her energy and strength as a musician. A pouty bass line gradually forms a momentum that herds together a troupe of sonic luggage exploding into a furnace of fuzz that will make any listener wrench themselves into a pair of bell bottom jeans. “Basically, I will program modular synths, link them up via MIDI or CV so they are all at the same tempo. Same thing with drum machines. I will get my drum machine out and put all those things through a mixer and sync them up so they’re all at the same tempo. Then I will just play and basically make live, post-industrial music. The genesis of ‘Broken Man’ came from making music with a modular synth until it lit me up inside.”

During the creative process, Clark emphasises that the All Born Screaming album came about through physical connection and touch. “Everything about this record is very tactile, whether it’s running piano through tape machines and touching the actual tape so that it slows down and speeds up so that everything is electricity into circuitry and chaos rendered into that, which makes a little bit of sense.” But what is it that marks the completion of a song? Layers are introduced, refined, discarded, refined again. Only the creator is aware of the intricacies inherent in their work. The intimately concentrated process coalesces to form the final opus. Disengagement, the vacant transparency of what is, allowing for the harmonious equilibrium of the work to be experienced. “I feel like you know [a song] is finished if you try to change it and you make it worse. I’ve done it enough to know in my gut that I’ve made the best rendering that I can at this time.”

It should then come as no surprise to learn that Clark produced the All Born Screaming album entirely on her own. She received instruction from her engineer during the pandemic, who taught her the nuances of audio production. After recognising a penchant and aptitude for being a producer in her own right, Clark began to sharpen her own tools and developed the techniques necessary for choreographing what she avows as “the sound of the inside of my head rendered in the most pure and honest way.”

With the candour of a true virtuoso, her eclectic soundscape is a merging of so many different forms of music. This unique amalgamation of song-craft is the virtue and patina of St. Vincent.

“As a producer, it’s important to understand that different sounds have different meanings, and there are reasons why sounds sound how they do: why some are distorted, others dry. All those details add up to make meaning, and meaning helps tell the story.”

While Clark may be lauded for her impressive feats of creative control, her album also features contributions from many notable and admired figures. But the introduction of other artists into the work begets the question of suitability, something which affords appropriate consideration and stresses the artist. “I often find myself asking: who do I bring in and for what? Do I bring them in because I want them to sound exactly like they sound? Or do I bring them in because I know that they get asked to do one thing, but I want to see them do another”, she tells me.

Collaborating with other musicians allows Clark to constantly learn new methods of approach, confessing that she also takes guitar lessons from her friend Robert Ellis. The amorphous kaleidoscope of artistry that is St.Vincent is akin to a gift to all its listeners. Stylistically dynamic and far-reaching, the album is graced with a curated entourage of talent that boasts a remarkable feat of synergy. “It was a small but mighty group of people, including some of the best drummers in the world, Dave Grohl, Josh Freese, Marc Guiliana, Stella Mozgawa. My friend Cate Le Bon also came in and played bass and sang and held my hand when I felt crazy. Justin Meldal-Johnsen, one of the best bass players in the world and an incredible producer in his own right was also involved. Everybody had incredible chops and incredible taste. Sometimes they would do something that was a total surprise but so much better than I had imagined.”

Clark decides not to use notions of artistic intention to defend how listeners perceive her music. For her, releasing a piece of work to the world leaves it open to the perspectives of those who experience it. “I would say a lot of times artists aren’t really the best ones to explain an album”, she reveals. “Once it’s out in the world, I think it’s for other people to interpret and enjoy or loathe. It’s their Rorschach test and doesn’t have much to do with me anymore in a beautiful way, the way it’s supposed to be.” Whether one is captivated by the music of St. Vincent or listening blasé, the one thing that they share is that they are All Born Screaming.