Recap St. Vincent at High Noon Saloon

Annie Clark's guitar played a lot of roles during her band St. Vincent's show Friday night at the High Noon Saloon. She didn't play rhythm and lead so much as pivot boldly around her own deceptively pristine vocals, with delicately blooming, jazz-like chords, tightly controlled noise-rock breakdowns, and even beatboxing. Her six-string glittered like a toy piano on the intro to "Now, Now" (the first track from 2007's Marry Me), joined multi-instrumentalists Evan Smith and Daniel Hart's violin, clarinet, and sax in a mini old-movie symphony on "Marry Me" and "Black Rainbow," and even pulled off an incredibly convincing George Harrison impersonation on Clark's cover of The Beatles' "Dig A Pony," for which her four-piece band left her alone.

It was refreshing to see the stereotype of the adorable indie-rock chick (or, as Clark has called it, "the sexism of lowered expectations") catch a fork in the face before such an eager crowd, thanks to Clark's workhorse musicianship and screwy stage presence. ("I feel like I'm on awkward medicine today," she admitted during a fumbled attempt at stage banter.)

Clark effortlessly tossed off funky little fills under the chorus of "Save Me From What I Want," filling out the arrangement, as she often did, in a way that sounded a bit less cushy and more raucous than the recorded version on this year's Actor. During the song, Clark cued up harmonized vocal loops of herself with a pedal, then stood back, her eyes closed and her feet pumping in a robotic two-step as the loops went on, to rather eerie effect. A little rawness served her even better as an encore rendition of "Your Lips Are Red" whipped into a dissonant hook that almost sounded as if it was recorded one way and then played backwards and sped up.

Clark and band might have been at their best on "Marrow," from Actor: Clark smacked the body of her guitar to create an ominous boom under Smith and bassist William Flynn's undulating clarinet intro, and drummer Anthony LaMarca's snare abruptly snapped the band from a gentle verse to a chorus built around a noisy, stabbing guitar hook. Still, no one onstage was ever quite so busy as Clark herself. Her resourceful and challenging performance didn't let the crowd bask in middling quirkiness. Instead, this shredder-songwriter focused her unsettling stare on points beyond indie rock's festering comfort zone.