Friday, December 1, 2017

St. Vincent, November 27, 2017, The Anthem in DC

The Anthem has great parking, friendly staff, tons of women's bathrooms and bars, and some built-in seating on the balconies (for extra money), but I didn't like it as a venue. It's just too big-so the performs look like insects from the balconies, and there are no TV screens to help you see the details of the performance. Ticket prices are higher here than 9:30 club and the experience isn't as good, and it's on the far side of town, so why come? 99% of the time I've already seen an act I care about by the time it's in a big venue like this, so there's not much point. I also didn't appreciate the fog machines, but I always hate those. The balcony's safety rails are lower than a tall person's center of gravity, which appears to be just begging for an accident and lawsuit.

The show started off with a disturbing video about a dead dad who ends up in a panda suit at his daughter's birthday party. The video was created by St. Vincent, and it wasn't good. The actual show featured mostly recorded music with St. Vincent standing still on stage wearing a sexploitation outfit of a pink vinyl leotard and thigh-high high-heeled go-go boots. Every song, the curtain would move a few feet and she's shift to a different locale, where she'd again stand still, strumming her guitar and singing to recorded music, looking like a pink dominatrix mannequin.  There was no band - ever. It. Was. Dull. She seemed to be trying hard to be stylishly edgy, but failed.

Show was in acts, like a play. The 2nd act featured dramatic pose, sometimes laying down in front of an abstract vampire mural. She seemed to have a guitar fetish - sometimes changing guitars out twice per song.

In act 3, she stood in front of a screen on a circle pedestal while weird sexually-charged videos played behind her, sometimes featuring loops of expressionless images of St. Vincent in those videos. She was expressionless in all images - she looked dead inside.

This show was an extreme disappointment after the last tour - that show was one of my favorites of the year.