Annie Clark is nearly out of her seat, her eyes fixed on two dancers in bright pastel dresses as they twirl and play with inflatable toys on the stage in front of her. She's leaning forward, laughing and jumping in surprise at the Annie-B Parson-choreographed work that is being debuted at the House of Peroni—a three-day pop-up gallery in New York curated by Clark.

"I wasn't thinking super conscious thoughts. I was just reacting to it very viscerally," Clark says in an interview with Esquire.com after the opening, which brought guests like Aziz Ansari, Nina Agdal, Kate Miller, and Greta Bellamacina. "It delighted me and it made me laugh. I thought it was beautiful, and it did all the things that I would want from a performance."

Around the space is a selection of art—large and small works by artists and collaborators who have inspired Clark's striking visual style. There's a room-sized installation called "Chill Memphis Chill," an oasis of cloud-covered walls and tranquil white tile created by frequent St. Vincent collaborator and set designer Lauren Machen. There's a chair from another St. Vincent collaborator, David Byrne of the Talking Heads. It's like stepping inside a fever dream of Clark's creative process, where the bright colours and hues are reminiscent of the early visuals that complete the experience of the new St. Vincent album, Masseduction.

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Through two music videos and a handful of live performances, Clark has already established the aesthetic for this album. The video for the album's first single, "New York," is directed by artist Alex Da Corte and features windows and city sets from the song's title in the style of his vibrant instillations. The video for "Los Ageless" is an equally bright and pastel production; directed by Willo Perron, it sees Clark satirising the plastic, yoga-guided lives of L.A. socialites—complete with a visual nod to Terry Gilliam's iconic dystopian film, Brazil. St. Vincent's performance on The Late Show last week was set in a similarly playful world of monochromatic shades, as was the album's debut at a show in Los Angeles.

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"I had a conversation with my creative director Willo Perron in the Spring before the record was done, and we just kind of started brainstorming the color palette and the world, and that was the genesis of the framework of the aesthetic. Then you build it from there," Clark says of her creative process for the album's visuals. "There's always those things that you think are going to be perfect at the beginning and you get halfway there and you go, 'Oh, actually we shouldn't do this idea.' If you knew what you were going to do when you started it would be boring. The point is the process."

"If you knew what you were going to do when you started it would be boring. The point is the process."

Like one of her idols, David Bowie—the late New York fixture who inspired some music on this record—each of St. Vincent's albums is complete with a very specific visual experience that's consistent throughout her live tours. On the 2014 tour in support of her last self-titled album, Clark performed in a dystopian sci-fi paranoid illusion, with her shock of white hair contrasting the blood on her costume. It was a run of shows which Clark told me at the time were inspired by a near-future cult leader, where "the supernatural and the subconscious narrative we have with shapes and movement." That tour was also choreographed by Parson, who created the dance for Clark's Manhattan pop-up gallery. And she made some small contributions to St. Vincent's upcoming tour. "I'm not doing so much postmodern choreography as it were, but I had her come in and help me move my body on the stage," Clark says.

In a culture where music is made, consumed, and disposed faster than ever, few artists today take the time to develop such a cohesive interworking visual and auditory experience. For St. Vincent, this journey begins with words or sounds rather than the visuals, which she crafts with her collaborators after the music is written.

"I guess the creative process is sort of mysterious," Clark says of her mindset while writing. "Some songs start out as stories—more or less prose, and you have to figure out what they sound like. And other things are products of working on a drum machine and building rhythm first. Sometimes I just wake up with melodies in my head and I try to capture them as quickly as possible."

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True to how it was written, Masseduction very much feels like a collection of diary entries. Often these songs begin as small little voice memos taken on Clark's phone. "You know what the shiniest ones are because they stick in your head. There's a lot of ones that you go back through and go, 'Oh, I had completely forgotten about this idea or this melody,' and it becomes this big puzzle," Clark explains. These notes are, as she describes, a "little melody usually, just like a da da da da dadadada da da da." She sings a few notes off the top of her head, almost mimicking the birth of a new song. "It's a really embarrassing first sketch of something you squirrel away for later and just hope it becomes something good."

The result is a beautiful and tragic album from St. Vincent, one that, despite the vibrant imagery, is admittedly sad. It's about high-profile relationships, loss, and other struggles that Clark has been known to keep to herself. But as she's about to kick off a lengthy tour, it's not material that Clark will struggle to revisit night after night—because she's already done that part.

"I wouldn't necessarily think that playing this will be therapeutic," she says. "The story for me is in making the thing and once it's kind of made I'm happy to be done. I don't spend tons of time ruminating over the thing I decided was done at some point. The joy is in the making."

Clark has said that Byrne always encouraged her to see something "real and strange" in every city. And when I ask her to describe the last time she saw something like that, she hesitates. "I don't know—all I do is work now," she says, laughing. "It's been a while." So, in other words, all the time.

From: Esquire US