Annie Clark has come a long way from her days as a member of The Polyphonic Spree’s touring band, with her fanbase and critical acclaim steadily increasing with each release and tour as St. Vincent. Marry Me, St. Vincent’s 2007 debut, introduced the world to an artist with charmingly intricate lyrics and compositions that set Clark in a class above the countless idiosyncratic indie singer-songwriters. In 2009′s Actor, Clark expanded upon and perfected Marry Me’s musical and lyrical dichotomy between the dreamy and the nightmarish as she elaborately composed each song as a film score.

St. Vincent instantly proved to be a powerful force as a live act as Clark’s angelic voice filled the Allen Room for set opener “The Strangers”. Dozens of jaws were left agape as Clark wailed at the end of “Just the Same but Brand New”, and while ordinarily performing such a show-stopper so early would be a misstep, St. Vincent is no ordinary act. Joining St. Vincent for “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood” was Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon to sing the vocal parts that Clark usually performs with a second, distorted microphone.  Vernon would later take the stage, along with The National’s Bryce Dessner, for “Roslyn”, a song Clark and Vernon “Skype’d together” for the New Moon soundtrack.

As part of the Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, Clark decided to go “a little bit closer to home” by performing a gorgeously eerie cover of a song from “Brooklyn, circa 2006″ to illustrate the strength of American songwriting: The National’s “Mistaken for Strangers”. The biggest surprise of the evening soon followed, as none other than David Byrne took the stage for “Breathing”, a new song that he had written with Clark. Byrne and Clark proved to be a match made in heaven, and had this not been a seated venue, everyone would surely have been dancing.

Closing out the main set were “Marrow” and “Your Lips Are Red”, both of which feature Annie Clark punching her guitar to demonic perfection, and an encore of “The Party” that left the audience wanting even more.  Her performance at the Allen Room proved Clark’s status as a star in the making. As a guitar prodigy incomparable among her peers in the indie world and a uniquely creative composer and performer, the best of St. Vincent is surely yet to come.