Interviews (St. Vincent, Christopher Guest)
The “ever-so-slightly deranged” St. Vincent at Pitchfork:
I thought your first album, Marry Me, was actorly in that it sometimes sounded like you were playing different characters from song to song. With Actor, did you want to bring that idea to the forefront?
Lyrically, the new album actually isn’t as dressed-up in metaphor– it’s not as guardedly clever [laughs]. As far as the title goes, I would just watch films on silent and think, “How can I score this scene?” as a writing exercise. So I envisioned the whole thing to be like a film score. Then I realized, “Oh wait, I write pop songs. I need words as well.” I was thinking about David Mamet a lot– I have such a crush on David Mamet– and about the whole idea of what a drama is.
Christopher Guest at Paste:
You’ve done both improvisational music and comedy for a long time. Is there a major difference for you when musical improvisation is also comedic?
Well, there is in the sense that musically there’s nothing inherently funny about improvising musically. Well, there could be, I guess. Comedy comes largely from characters that I’ve played. Whether it’s Spinal Tap or A Mighty Wind, it’s a very arcane, or twisted, way to make music. Because it comes, even though I’m playing it, it comes from my person in the movie. It’s not what I would have written. I wouldn’t have written some of those songs or played them that way. So there’s a great freedom and kind of weirdness from doing that. This record is different. There’s nothing inherently funny about this record. The improvisations are purely musical, and they just go where they go. But in the same way you can’t explain improvisation to someone who doesn’t do it, you can intellectually explain it, but they just look at you as if they have no idea what you’re talking about—because how does that click to a non-musician? Or to a person who isn’t an actor, trying to explain that you just talk, and that’s what happens. You can’t convince anybody that that actually can happen.
