St. Vincent - At The Proms (2025)

As the lights went down at the Royal Albert Hall on 3 September 2025 you could have heard a pin drop. The formidable St. Vincent, née Annie Clark, was about to conclude the world tour for her album 'All Born Screaming' with her debut at the 2025 Proms. It was a fabulous piece of programming and would prove to be one of the live music highlights of the year. Jules Buckley and his Orchestra played 'We Put A Pearl In The Ground, providing an extra-terrestrial wash of sound as St. Vincent herself sashayed on stage, and then we were into 'Hell Is Near' and her idiosyncratically soulful vocals sat effortlessly within the electric density of the orchestration, and the star was so pleased she looked like she had to stop herself applauding the orchestra. 'Violent Times' was like the theme for a magnificently magisterial lost Bond film, and then she delivered 'I Prefer Your Love' with a heartfelt simplicity which didn’t so much cut through the lush orchestration as cut with it. The song was poetic and transcendent, creating simplicity through complexity, gracefully accentuated with a glockenspiel. Then the moment that had to come, and which we were all waiting for… St. Vincent strapped on her guitar, and the orchestra started playing 'The Strangers', which was deliriously like a Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson Broadway song for the 21st Century. 

The politely metronomic introduction in Rachel Eckroth and Peter Riley’s arrangement featured the bass drum sweeping the street clean for the approaching steam roller which was St. Vincent’s guitar solo. On 'Black Rainbow' the incisive intelligence of her lyrics were superbly served by the string section which adroitly underscored the emotional nuances, while the music climbed a mountain up to a cliff edge and then stepped off into silence. For 'Marrow', the staccato, ecstatic urgency of St. Vincent’s guitar was followed by an unbearably suspenseful setting by Peter Riley which had the orchestra tightening the ratchet of tension, until it was finally released in the gushing spurt of her ferocious guitar solo. The arrangement perfectly matched the technicolour surrealism of St. Vincent’s song-writing - terse and dense and rich, violent and beautiful. Jules Buckley’s arrangement for 'The Bed' transformed it into a piece of otherworldly exotica, a lullaby from a different dimension. The marimba gave a gamelan colouring and the string section provided a trampoline for the lyrics, lifting the song and perfectly enhancing it instead of overwhelming it. It was revelatory what a perfectly shared endeavour this was, St Vincent and her guitar in total collaboration with orchestra. Sam Gale’s arrangement gave 'Now, Now' an irresistibly building logic with its insistent Raymond Scott-style electronica, and the strings provided a swirling emphasis. 

'Live In the Dream' was an emergency room anecdote, related like a dreamy beach ballad in Tom Trapp’s arrangement, but it was a J.G. Ballard beach ballad, with the waves breaking on an apocalyptic Waikiki. St. Vincent played a solo which sounded like Hawaiian slack key guitar, lyrical and luxuriant, and it was wonderful the way the orchestra stayed out of her way while always supporting the sense of the song. Her guitar gently screamed, howled at the moon, crooned with ecstasy, while the orchestra was a gentle chaperone. On 'The Nowhere Inn' Rachel Eckroth and Peter Riley’s arrangement provided sounds like a Martian mariachi band. St. Vincent’s guitar pried open the doors of perception and the orchestra followed her through, trumpets calling valiantly as she intoned her hypnotic, shamanistic, incantatory vocals “We’re all at Nowhere and where are you now?”. The same arranging duo transformed 'Los Ageless' into a forlorn but defiant ballad for a film noir heroine with the string section charting the ECG ups and downs of an unravelling endeavour. 'New York' is one of St. Vincent’s best known songs and for this Jules Buckley arrangement she climbed down off the stage and walked among us...or at least among the lucky Prommers in the standing section. She had the whole hall clapping, and when she started jumping up and down she damn near had it pogoing. 'Paris Is Burning' closed the show, before rapturous applause encouraged her to come back for a couple of encores, ending a triumphant performance at the BBC Proms.   

Track listing

01 We Put A Pearl In The Ground (arr. Sam Gale)
02 Hell Is Near (arr. Sam Gale)
03 Reckless (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
04 Violent Times (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
05 I Prefer Your Love (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
06 The Strangers (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
07 Black Rainbow (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Jules Buckley)
08 Marrow (arr. Peter Riley)
09 The Bed (arr. Jules Buckley)
10 Smoking Section (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
11 Now, Now (arr. Sam Gale)
12 Live In The Dream (arr. Tom Trapp)
13 The Nowhere Inn (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
14 Digital Witness (arr. Tom Trapp)
15 Los Ageless (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
16 The Party (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
17 New York (arr. Jules Buckley)
18 Paris Is Burning (arr. Jochen Neuffer)

19 Candy Darling (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
20 Slow Disco (arr. Jules Buckley)

Concert review by Andrew Cartmel.