(photographs by Keith Klenowski)
I will admit it, it has been awhile since I went out to concerts on consecutive nights here in Cincinnati. A combination of laziness, being a parent and a hit or miss concert schedule has kept me from being out and about on back to back nights. But, after catching The Tallest Man On Earth and John Vanderslice on Monday night, I made the trek out again to see St. Vincent at the same venue, the Southgate House on Tuesday night.

I had a hard time NOT showing up, because after all, when it comes to indie artists, St. Vincent is about as white hot as a musician can get right now. Her debut record, Marry Me, was a critical success, but left me wanting more, and the new record Actor, seems to be filling in all the gaps nicely. St. Vincent took that stage along with her band, comprised of four other musicians to a decent sized crowd in Newport.

As soon as she struck the first note on her guitar, it was pretty obvious to most of us that this was not your typical Southgate House performance. I mean, nothing against the historic venue, but it’s not every night that you get a full on light show on stage during the performance. And not a cheesy red and blue switcheroo, but a real nice looking light show. Pardon me if I sound too impressed by that, it’s just not something I am used to at SGH.

The first five songs of the performance, were beyond impressive, the backing band sounded as “on” as is possible and Annie aka St. Vincent belted out the songs that seemed to be her strongest from both records before I could even blink. “Marry Me” started off the set, and really sounded great, but only served as a warm up to “Actor Out Of Work”, “Save Me From What I Want” and my personal favorite from her debut record, “Now Now.”

If you have yet to see St. Vincent live, you may be like me and expect a variety of backing vocals to make up some of the call and response sounds or mixture of vox distortions that you hear throughout the recordings. This is not the case however, as Annie herself manages to tackle both parts of the vocal mix through two separate microphones throughout her performance. Quite an impressive duplication of the recorded sound and a tip of my hat to her for being able to time it all so well, which cannot be an easy feat.

Morphing between a Disney movie pixie into a guitar rock genius, St. Vincent managed to rip off the first half of the set in such fine fashion, that the crowd barely knew what to do with themselves. I mean, it seemed like anyone in their right mind would be bouncing and dancing along with the music, but the audience seemed to be in a partial state of shock at what they were seeing.

“Wow, it’s been a minute since I’ve been up in this piece” Annie said to break the tension after the first half of the set. The humorous crack seemed to loosen the audience up just enough before lulling them back into a trance with a solo rendition of “Paris Is Burning”. The second half of the show was almost as impressive as well, hitting some great tunes like “Marrow” and “Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood” from the new album, all the while in step with the light show and a backing band that remained in the shadows, but did not miss a beat all night long.

So maybe I needed live confirmation that St. Vincent could be the next big thing in indie rock, but based on this performance, it’s hard not to admit it. Be sure to catch her live if you get the opportunity.

More pictures after the jump…..