St. Vincent loves Philly and is coming back this week with a show

When Annie Clark hears Philadelphia visual artist Alex Da Corte’s name, she goes into full Philly fan girl mode.

“Philly!” shouted the guitarist and songwriter known as St. Vincent, speaking from her home studio in Los Angeles during a break in the tour that will bring her to the Met Philly on Friday night. “I love Philly.”

What do you love about Philly, St. Vincent?

“As a person who, believe it or not, has always felt underdog-ish, I love the scrappiness,” she said. “But this is the perfect summation of why I love Philly.”

Da Corte directed the videos for “New York” on St. Vincent’s 2018 Masseduction and her new album All Born Screaming’s “Broken Man” and Clark spent some time in Da Corte’s studio in the Juniata neighborhood, where they discussed the album’s artistic direction.

The artist, who Clark calls “a biggest brain, biggest heart person,” had to go somewhere, leaving Clark to spend the afternoon wandering Fishtown before taking the train back to New York.

“I walked into a restaurant” — she doesn’t recall the name — “and the waitress said. ‘I’m a really big fan.’ I was like ‘Oh my God, thank you so much.’

“She didn’t say, ‘Can I get a selfie?’ She said, ‘You wanna do a shot?’ I was like, ‘Hell yeah!’ and she came over and poured two shots of tequila,” Clark said.

“She didn’t want a photo, she didn’t want to post it. She just wanted to do a shot. That’s why I love Philly.”

The artwork for All Born Screaming was inspired by Clark and Da Corte’s visit to Madrid’s Prado Museum last year. “We walked into the room with Goya’s “Black Paintings” and looked at each other like, ‘This is it!’”

Those 19th-century artworks inspired the album’s cover image and the clip for the hellacious “Broken Man,” where the only light emanates from Clark’s body and before the song is over, she’s on fire.

Clark has been carrying around the title All Born Screaming since before she released her debut album, Marry Me, in 2007 while playing guitar in the band Polyphonic Spree. She felt she needed more life experience to make music worthy of it.

“None of us asks to be born, right?” said the Dallas-raised singer, 41. “Life is both brutal and beautiful and we have to live it to the fullest … All of us. This is the human condition. There’s not us and them. We are just all in this together.”

While making All Born Screaming, Clark spent time listening to Texas avant-rock band Butthole Surfers. “When they would roll though town, the kids would feel the menace. There’s a level of weirdo and a level of menace to the band, and there’s a menace in this new record.” So with her live show, “I need to make sure it’s a little confusing. I need to protect the menace.”

All Born Screaming follows 2021 Daddy’s Home, in which Clark wore a blonde wig inspired by Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas and created an aesthetic she called “Gena Rowlands in a Cassavetes film,” citing the actress who died last month at 94.

All Born Screaming is less conceptual and more immediate.

“With every record I’ve ever made, I’m writing about exactly what’s going on in my life at the time,” Clark said. “Life is inherently chaotic. Emotions are chaotic. And I’ve always had this place in my life called music where I can take chaos and make something out of it. It’s the driving force in my life.”

She goes on: “This record is not about deconstructing persona, or ‘What is authenticity?’ or anything like that. It’s just about life and death and birth and love — and that’s it. We are here for such a short time. So let’s go.”

St. Vincent at the Met Philly, 858 N. Broad St., at 8 p.m. Friday, themetphilly.com.

The Haverford Music Festival — which actually happens in Havertown — is Saturday, with National Reserve, Queen Esther, Wesley Stace’s Corporal Quorum, Iain Mathews with Jim Fogarty, Bethlehem & Sad Patrick, and Sharing Contest. It’s free. The show goes on without Barry Gutman, the fest’s media officer and long time fixture on the Philly scene, who died in August.

Havertown hometown hero Scott McClatchy celebrates his new album One Time One Night in America at the Nail on Friday. Philly’s Florry and Neil Young cover band Cocoa Leaves & Pearls plays Spruce Street Harbor Park on Saturday. That’s free, too.

It’s also Waxahatchee weekend. Former Philadelphian Katie Crutchfield brings it all back home in support of her superb 2024 album, Tiger’s Blood, at the Fillmore. Tim Heidecker and Gladie open Saturday; Snail Mail and Greg Mendez do the honors Sunday.

It’s also time for a Pearl Jam twofer. Eddie Vedder and his Seattle grunge cohorts bring their “Dark Matter Tour” to the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday and Monday. Glen Hansard opens.

Brit pop-punk forerunners the Buzzcocks, with only original member Steve Diggle, plays Union Transfer on Sunday. Fingers crossed that founding member Steve Garvey, who lives in New Hope, will make an appearance. That night, Filipino British songwriter Beabadoobee plays the Met, behind her new Rick Rubin-produced This is How Tomorrow Moves.

There are two big shows at the Shore on Saturday, with Perry Farrell bringing 1990s alt-rock avatars to the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, and Crowded House is up from Down Under in support of Gravity Stairs at Ocean Resort.

The overstuffed night of next week is Tuesday. Los Angeles band La Santa Cecilia, winner of the Latin rock Grammy for last year’s Trienta Dias, is at World Cafe Live. The Jam’s Paul Weller plays the Keswick Theatre. Bikini Kill returns to Franklin Music Hall. And New Orleans Mardi Gras funk band the Rumble feat. Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr plays Ardmore Music Hall.