Miles Davis said the hardest thing for a musician to do is to play like oneself. Annie Clark believes she’s achieved the feat on her fourth studio album as St Vincent. It’s the reason she settled on its eponymous title.

“I thought I had created something that felt singular and had its own little lane in the world today,” she says.

Everything Clarke does feels considered. The 2012 collaboration with Talking Heads’ David Byrne, Love This Giant, saw two bold adventurers journey through brass and funk. Not only is it a surprising and rewarding listen but it also brought her music to a new audience.

“I am of the opinion you shouldn’t do anything for money you wouldn’t do for free. David Byrne is one of my absolute heroes and I love him personally. Getting to work with him was so much fun and so exciting.

“If he had been an underground New York artist with the same catalogue which I loved I would have worked with him as well. The joy is in the work and the art and trying to make something which feels new, which makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.”

Her latest studio album as St Vincent ticks those boxes – from the radioactive electro grooves of album opener Rattlesnake to the jagged fuzz guitar funk of Bring Me Your Loves and I Prefer Your Love, an expansive ballad composed by a lapsed Catholic.

Her story since 2007’s Marry Me has been constant evolution as much as a flurry of snapshot standalone projects. This year’s release continues along the same path. Still, Clarke always has an eye on the next project.

“I can go in a lot of different directions from here,” she reveals. “I wake up three times a night with melodies in my head. I will record into my phone so I can’t stop the music. It is always coming to me. I have to be adept enough or present enough to act when it comes.”

Clarke is a voracious cultural consumer. Short stories from Lorrie Moore’s Birds Of America collection give titles to Severed Crossed Fingers and Birth In Reverse. And the Memphis design movement affects her style – both musically and visually. The latter most obviously in the regal pose of power on the album sleeve.

“I wanted the cover and the art to convey a sense of power so I had to think what that meant to me. I drew from a lot of things I find powerful like symmetry and cult-like imagery, things that look like uniforms, thrones and symbols which feel ancient.”

She says the logo is ancient forms placed together to create letters and acknowledges primitivism.

“I like things boiled down to their elemental shape and re-contextualised. You can see that in the Memphis design movement, these elemental shapes and forms are put together in new ways. There is a lot of similarities and through lines between what I try to do musically and referencing all of these art things I like.”

As such, she’s never stuck for ideas.

“There is no such thing as writers’ block. There are so many things which are fascinating. Read about one and then write about it. There are so many things to be excited about. The fun challenge if you are an artist of any kind is to draw it all together and interpret it all through your lens and see what happens.”

Her obsessive streak drives her work ethic. She taught herself guitar aged 12 and worked office-like hours to write and record St Vincent.

“To make something good you have to throw your whole body into it. Not rest until it is the thing you want it to be. When I write a record that is what I am doing. It’s 10am and I am working till 7pm. Everyone else has a job. People have to do horrible things to earn a measly living. If you are a musician you are one of the lucky ones. So you take it seriously.”

As a girl in sixth grade she taught herself guitar because she loved Nirvana. Earlier in the year she performed with the remaining members of the Seattle group as they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

She sang Lithium with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear during their first public performance as Nirvana since Kurt Cobain died in 1994.

“Nirvana changed my life and it was one of the most amazing things to have ever happened in my life. I am still awestruck by fact it even happened. It’s too big to process. I don’t know where to put it.”

 

St Vincent

Winter Garden, Compton Street, Eastbourne, Thursday, October 23 Doors 7.30pm, £17.50.

Call 01323 412000.