Música: David Byrne and St Vincent: 'People assume this is an art project'
St Vincent and David Byrne. Photograph: Chris Sembrot for the Guardian
Collaboration between the Talking Heads man and Annie Clark was conceived at hipster benefit gigs but Love This Giant isn't avant garde; it's pure, brassy New York fun
"Yeah. I hope your gallery show in Chelsea goes very well," Annie Clark, known as St Vincent, continues the imagined conversation. "I wish you both … very well."
The pair are sitting together in Byrne's Manhattan office, and it's easy to see why they are suited. Just as Byrne, post-Talking Heads, has enjoyed the kind of career that takes inchair-building, cycling books and filling live shows with interpretative dance, Clark has pursued a similarly individual path. Her albums as St Vincent have explored whatever's been interesting her at any given moment, from woodwind and string arrangements to guitar-pedal geek-outs (within songs about Eric Rohmer films). As yet, though, there has been no interpretative dance.
Which brings us back to the artiness of the album Byrne and Clark have made together, Love This Giant. A product of three years' work, It could easily have been an admirable, unlistenable avant garde noise. Instead it's a dramatic collection of uptempo pop songs soldered together by brass; it's a grand, elegant and surprisingly fun record. It is concerned with big themes, as one might expect: "natural disasters and tectonic shifts", according to Clark, with a bit of mortality thrown in for good measure (Byrne sings out the funky I Am An Ape with an abrupt "I will not last, I too shall pass").
"I tried to write more personal [lyrics] at first, and it didn't seem to be working," explains Byrne. "The brass takes over a lot. Whether they're playing funky or more orchestral, it says, 'We're talking about big stuff now.' So we had to go with that, lyrically." That said, the conversation keeps returning to, well, the New York artiness of it all.
"When we started this project," Clark confesses, "it was less about songs and more about 'art music'. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. But over the course of it, we started to veer more towards songs."
"Annie suggested we think about using a brass band as the core, and I loved that idea," says Byrne. "So a lot of it became about finding the voice; what sorts of melodies and words go with it, how our stuff would fit into that musical universe. Plus, I knew it would give the record a very unique sound that's different from Annie's records, or mine."
Clark adds further: "Not that the sound of brass is necessarily timeless, but it's not as if we're chasing some sort of musical ephemera that's going to pass quickly, like, 'Oh, we'd better get this new wave record out before people get tired of new wave.'"
Having recruited brass royalty the Dap Kings and Antibalas to play on it, what's striking about Love This Giant is its summery, exuberant poppiness. It is delightfully unpretentious.
"Well, I think the record is very artful," counters Clark. "But sometimes there's music you feel you should like, and you know it's good, but for some reason you don't want to put it on the record player. This is not that record."
Love This Giant originally emerged from a series of benefit concerts curated by Brooklyn's most esoteric bands. Byrne and Clark had been "orbiting" for a while, says Clark, but they finally met at a party for Dark Was The Night, a concert in aid of the Red Hot charity, for whom Byrne had recorded a song with Dirty Projectors. Six days later, the pair found each other again at a second benefit, this time for Housing Works, another HIV/Aids charity. Housing Works had recently paired Dirty Projectors (who are emerging from this picture as the surprise Pudsey Bear of indie rock) with Björk for a live performance and subsequent EP,Mount Wittenberg Orca.
"[Dirty Projectors' Dave] Longstreth wrote a half-dozen songs for that in six weeks!" exclaims Byrne.
"I even heard he wrote all the words in the time between the Dark Is The Night show and the Housing Works benefit," adds Clark, indulging in what may be the indiest bit of gossip of all time.
In the wake of Mount Wittenberg Orca's acclaim, Housing Works suggested Byrne and Clark team up for a similar project. "It was a job offer, and we took it," smiles Clark.
Neither have been short of such offers in the past, but the process of building something together appealed. "In many cases Annie will throw me something that's in a pretty raw state. Judging by the previous things you've heard from the person, you have to assume ..." Byrne tails off.
"… they have some kind of vision?" offers Clark.
"Yes, that there's something there, just a kernel, but it's worth developing that further. That even when things are in a tenuous state, there's potential there. But you have to be willing to compromise, and be generous about the other person's things. Lots of stuff which is kind of tough sometimes. I did a collaboration with Brian Eno a few years ago and it was very different, very traditional. All the music was his, I just wrote tunes and words and sang over it. We've both done things where you work on someone else's song and it's very clear-cut. But this, every step of the way, things were being built together."
The pair are about to head off on a tour of north America together. Asked what this will entail, the spectre of interpretative dance immediately rears its head. "We're meeting tomorrow with a big choreographer, Annie-B Parson, who can work with non-dancers as well as trained dancers. That doesn't mean there'll be a lot of leaping about, but there may be some movement," says Byrne, with a glint in his eye. The Guardian also enquires about the album's artwork, in which Clark's face is being stretched by wires, and Byrne's chin, on closer examination, has taken on a rugged cleft. "What?" he jokes, grabbing his face.
"Yeah, Buzz Lightyear," quips Clark.
"At one point," continues Byrne, "there was a beauty and the beast idea, but with the roles reversed, with me as a plastic beauty and Annie as a feral beast." ("Feral beast," she nods.) "It was, to me, making fun of our age difference, but it got tempered to be less obvious, more of a double take: 'Whoa!' We worked with this really great prosthetics guy, who did the Cremaster Cycle for Matthew Barney. We got our faces moulded, so we both have exact replicas of our faces. Every wrinkle, every pore."
So much for non-artsiness. For all the talk of songs and melodies, using a choreographer for their band and recruiting Matthew Barney's go-to prosthetics man suggests the smarts aren't quite being packed away. Yet, despite the presence of brass bands, long-standing New York music scene icon Byrne and adopted Manhattanite Clark have still managed to make a record that sounds Big Apple to its core.
"It doesn't sound particularly New York-y to me," shrugs Byrne. "When you say 'a New York record', I immediately think of something more hip-hop, or aggressive, or with harder beats."
Clark: "I think of Lou Reed or Patti Smith."
"Lou Reed with massive hip-hop beats," deadpans Byrne. Both fall about laughing: "That's the record he hasn't done yet!"
The writer's travel to New York was paid for by 4AD Records
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